LAKESIDE, MI - Seeking efficiency, cost-effectiveness and improved communication with patients, physicians in a Michigan-based health system have been testing a Web portal for virtual office visits.
The Henry Ford Health System, currently in the pilot phase of its use of Medseek’s eVisit tool, has launched the tool in the Henry Ford Medical Group practices in Harbortown, Novi, Southland, Troy and Lakeside.
Patients and physicians conduct online consultations by sending questions and responses through eVisit. Intended for brief, non-emergency assessments, the tool may prove valuable to medical groups as physician pay continues to be determined by patient volume.
“We’ve decided to allocate .6 work (relative value units) per eVisit,” said Diane Sayers, DO, associate medical director in HFMG’s Northern Region. A live visit worth .6 work RVUs would typically take 15 minutes, whereas the eVisit only takes about three minutes to complete, she said.
As the only physician in her group using the portal, Sayers has participated in roughly 25 eVisits. Patients using eVisit’s MyHealth portal can see lab results, renew prescription orders and schedule live appointments.
While the Henry Ford Health System hasn’t conducted enough eVisits to post conclusive data on its cost-effectiveness, Sayers believes the application could be best applied in the area of chronic care. “Some people probably can’t make it back for some of those live visits that are the most helpful,” she said. “This offers them a way to do it on their own time.”
Matthew Walsh, associate vice president of purchaser initiatives for Health Alliance Plan, the coverage held by most Henry Ford patients, has been primarily involved in setting up eVisit within HFHS. “The key areas we’ve focused on are quality and safety cost and utilization and satisfaction,” he said.
Walsh said eVisit has the potential to help reduce inpatient, outpatient and ER costs through preventative measures.
“If (patients) have the eVisit, they can get early access to a doctor and potentially avoid an ER visit,” he said.
As with most information technology applications, eVisit’s downside is its lengthy implementation process. Walsh said that with HFMG, eVisit was “exponentially easier to implement … because the group is so (electronic medical record)-heavy and so big.”
Even with an EMR system, there are other barriers to launching the portal within medical practices.
“You need the physician buy-in and the patient confidence,” said Sayers. “Right now we’re moving forward with a belief in the potential.”