A CES panel anticipates policy advances for digital health innovation, as providers and politicians look to measure the value of new ideas like AI and telehealth.
At a time when the nation is divided and combative, can digital health bridge that gap and bring both sides together? And could this help healthcare leaders plot a path forward for new ideas like AI, Hospital at Home, and wearables?
The idea was hinted at during a digital health policy panel Tuesday at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Moderated by Catherine Pugh, the Consumer Technology Association’s Director of Digital Health, the panel tossed about the idea that digital health may have enough support on both sides of the aisle to see some good policy wins during the upcoming four years of the Trump Administration.
“This is a bipartisan issue,” said John Quinn, Legislative Director for the Office of U.S. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Arizona). And there aren’t many of them around.
Quinn, along with panelists Stephanie Fiore, director of Digital Health Policy for Elevance Health, and Susan Kirsh, MD, MPH, Deputy Assistant Under Secretary for Health for the Department of Veteran Affairs’ DEAN portfolio, listed several topics that are likely to play a prominent role in healthcare policy over the next four years, including AI, telehealth, data interoperability, consumer privacy and CMS reimbursement.
The challenge, the panelists said, will be in finding a path between innovation and cost—a key initiative for the incoming administration.
As Fiore noted, “telehealth is a big deal,” but at the same time it’s “an expensive policy.”
AI could be the driving force in this argument. Kirsh, who’s involved with most of the digital health and telehealth strategies followed by the VA—the nation’s largest telehealth network—pointed out that AI has made some significant strides in reducing administrative workflows and reducing stress on clinicians, and is just now being integrated into clinical pathways.
“There is an incredible amount of opportunity in the clinical space,” she said.
The key for health system and hospital CIOs, CTOs, Chief Digital Health Officers and others is a comprehensive policy and standards that allow healthcare leaders to use AI safely and securely, and not be bogged down by administrative details that push clinicians away from the technology.
The same goes for telehealth and digital health. Quinn spoke of the potential of wearables to help both consumers and their care providers monitor health outside the doctor’s office, and Kirsh talked of the advances in augmented and virtual reality that allow clinicians to better experience what their patients are going through and to better prepare new doctors and nurses for the workforce.
The hangup is reimbursement. Clinicians won’t use this technology if they’re not supported by payers, especially Medicare. And the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been slow to advance new reimbursements and permissions because of the cost. Quinn noted both they and the Congressional Budget Office often have a hard time seeing the long-term benefits in health and wellness for those new technologies.
“We need to close the gap with CMS on reimbursements,” he said, “and make innovation legal.”
And for at least the next two years, he added, those agencies will be faced by a Congress controlled by one party in both the House and Senate. In the past, he said, they tend to listen more intently when that happens.
Fiore spoke of the advances in technology giving consumers access to (and more control over) their data. She sees the next four years as a pivotal time for consumer privacy and security policy, and while the federal government has struggled to pass legislation on consumer protections, more and more states are taking action on their level.
Quinn, referencing the recent spate of cybersecurity incidents, especially the Change Healthcare debacle, agreed.
“The unfortunate reality is that data is not private right now.”
And a new administration that prides itself on the strength of the private sector could make that a priority.
Unfortunately, the path ahead for digital health policy isn’t clear-cut. Nothing happening in Washington these days is easy to predict. Quinn noted that many healthcare-related provisions in the original 1,500-page end-of-year budget bill were removed, and that the final, 150-page bill that was passed by Congress contained few healthcare gains.
Researchers found that most health systems following the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home model are large urban hospitals, and said the current model may not be sustainable for small or rural hospitals.
A new study of the Hospital at Home strategy questions whether it can stand up in rural areas and small hospitals, key markets for the innovative program’s growth and sustainability.
In a December 23 study posted in JAMA, researchers from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania say almost all of the healthcare organizations participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) program are large, urban, not-for-profit and academic hospitals.
As of December 2024, 373 hospitals across 139 health systems in 39 states are following that CMS model, which includes a waiver enacted in 2020 to help participating hospitals receive Medicare reimbursement. The waiver was recently extended to March 31, 2025, and with CMS hinting that it will no longer grant extensions, supporters are lobbying Congress to make it permanent.
The implications of this latest study are that only large, well-resourced health systems can sustain a Hospital at Home program, leaving a significant percentage of the nation’s health systems and hospitals out in the cold. Yet advocates say this strategy, while complex, can save money and resources and improve clinical outcomes, all key metrics for any type of hospital.
“If CMS’ goal is to continue to expand hospital-at-home, these findings suggest that different incentives or outreach may be needed for smaller, rural, and non-teaching hospitals,” Hasham Zikry, MD, MS, an emergency medicine physician and clinical research fellow at UCLA Health and lead author of the study, said in a press release.
(One notable exception is Sanford Health, which launched its CMS-approved AHCAH program in November 2024 targeting patients in rural communities around Fargo, North Dakota. The health system is currently targeting an annual daily census of five patients and hopes to bring that number up to 12 soon.)
Zikry and his fellow researchers, David Schriger, MD, of UCLA Health and Austin Kilaru, MD, MSHP, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, also cite two familiar criticisms of the Hospital at Home movement: That these programs haven’t yet proven their value, and that they don’t take into account the pressure put on patients and their caregivers at home.
“Are family members of these patients acting as unpaid caregivers during these admissions?” Zikry asked in the press release. “Could these patients do just as well in other care settings? Do patients actually prefer to be at home? And are health systems leveraging this program equitably?”
In addition, he said: “Resources are being poured into these programs around the country, yet we still don’t have a comprehensive understanding of how the programs are functioning on the ground.”
Many expect the Hospital at Home strategy to take a hit if Congress declines to extend the CMS waiver or make it permanent. Without Medicare reimbursement and a relaxation of certain telehealth rules, some health systems may end or cut back their programs.
That said, supporters are arguing for at least another extension so that participating health systems can gather the data needed to prove the concept’s value. The prevailing opinion among both supporters and critics is that the strategy needs more time to gather data to prove value.
With its Digital Health Summit, the annual Consumer Electronics Show is giving healthcare leaders a look at the potential for truly integrated care.
As CES 2025 kicks off this week in Las Vegas, healthcare’s innovation and transformation leaders are keeping an eye on the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA’s) Digital Health Summit, as well as the various consumer-facing technologies, tools, and toys that could play a role in the health system of the future.
Healthcare has long claimed a part of the CES experience, starting with connected devices and apps designed to help consumers manage their health. Over the past several years, though, healthcare executives have joined the party, looking for tools and strategies to bridge the gap between the consumer and the patient.
Rene Quashie, CTA’s Vice President of Digital Health, says the event gives healthcare leaders an opportunity “to explore the future of health tech in the context of a broader, interconnected ecosystem.”
“Unlike traditional health conferences, CES brings together the full spectrum of technology innovators across industries, creating an environment where healthcare solutions are discussed alongside advancements in AI, robotics, IoT, and beyond,” he said in an e-mail to HealthLeaders. “This convergence fuels cross-industry collaboration, helping healthcare leaders identify transformative technologies and adapt them to meet the needs of consumers, clinicians, and payers.”
That integration should continue as health systems and hospitals push more services out of clinical settings and into the home, and as care providers develop programs to track their patients at home and manage care remotely. Strategies like remote patient monitoring (RPM) and Hospital at Home will rely more on consumer-friendly devices as that scale up and build sustainability.
Against that backdrop, there are opportunities for healthcare throughout the CES exhibit halls, which span both the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Venetian Expo. The smart home concept is an intriguing venue, with AI-enabled devices, sensors and appliances that can be used to monitor consumer activity and health, even diet, sleep, behavioral health and bathroom activity. Automobile manufacturers are including health apps and sensors in their new models, and even the popular gaming area includes games and gaming platforms that can be used for healthcare.
Quashie says the theme for healthcare-related events and vendors at CES this year is “the future of health,” with topics including AI, digital therapeutics, genomics, wearables, women’s health and workforce issues.
Will leaders get the answers they need from CES to advance their orginizations? I'll be there to report.
HealthLeaders’ most-read stories of the past year highlighted an interest in virtual care and care management, especially when connected to CMS coverage
The growing market for virtual care dominated HealthLeaders’ most-read innovation stories of 2024.
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers were fighting for the attention of empowered patients/consumers and facing competition from employers looking to control health plan costs and disruptors eyeing the convenient care market. The resulting battle for primary care saw a proliferation of virtual care platforms, giving patients access to primary care at the time and place of their choosing.
2024 saw an expansion of that strategy, with virtual care platforms for specialist consults, chronic care management, remote patient monitoring and other services.
The top story for the past year focused on one of the biggest disruptors in that market, Amazon, which launched Health Condition Programs in January. The online platform matches consumers to relevant health and wellness companies based on their browsing and shopping habits, enabling consumers to create managed care plans based on their health concerns and health plan coverage.
“Amazon wants to make it easier for people to get and stay healthy, and part of that is making it easier to discover the products, services, and professionals that can help them do that,” Aaron Martin, Amazon’s vice president, said in a press release issued by Omada Health, a digital health company that is partnering with Amazon to offer diabetes prevention and care and hypertension care services through the new platform. “Many aren’t aware of the healthcare benefits they are eligible for, that are typically no cost or subsidized by their employer or insurance plan. When customers are shopping for health-related products on Amazon, we can surface these benefits to provide even more support in improving their health, at no additional cost.”
Healthcare providers are bullish on care management as well, and they want to use virtual care and digital health to create those services for their patients. The traditional sticking point has been reimbursement: providers won’t fully embrace new technology unless they’re paid to use it.
The second-most popular story this year was the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) new program to support providers using virtual care and digital health to create value-based care programs. The Advanced Primary Care Management (APCM) model, with HCPCS codes included in the 2025 Physician Fee Schedule, incentivizes clinicians to use technology to create care management pathways around their patients, a key strategy on the journey to value-based care.
“While these new codes come with a number of administrative requirements, the APCM codes provide additional opportunities for practitioners to collect reimbursement for care management services, some of which they may already performing,” Alexandra Shalom, senior counsel with the Foley & Lardner law firm, said in a November blog. “HHS has long noted that effective primary care services and relationships are critical to improve health equity and access to care and as early as 2014, CMS recognized care management as a key component of primary care. As such, CMS’s goal in offering these codes is that it will allow practices to enhance or expand their care management services, which in turn will improve population-level mortality and reduce disparities.”
The third most-read story veered off in a different direction, though still focusing on the idea that providers are using virtual care and digital health to beef up their patient engagement efforts. A panel session at the HIMSS24 conference and exhibition this past March centered on how smaller health systems and hospitals, struggling to make ends meet and faced with competition, are changing their business model to focus on care management and preventive care, rather than ‘sick care.’
“A great deal of our future is in the outpatient side,” Tressa Springman, SVP and chief information and digital officer at LifeBridge Health, a five-hospital system based in Maryland, said during a panel session.
She noted that more than 50% of the health system’s quality-based reimbursement score for the state is focused on the patient experience, making that more important than actual clinical care. So they’re now setting their sights on access, convenience, and outpatient interactions.
“We’re really focusing on the community,” she said.
The draft and final PFS also gave advocates of digital therapeutics some good news: New HCPCS codes that will enable providers to seek reimbursement for some behavioral health treatments that use FDA-approved devices.
On the other hand, CMS did include some small improvements in telehealth coverage, but also said it wouldn’t extend most pandemic-era waivers to telehealth coverage and access. The news stunned telehealth advocates and led to coordinated lobbying efforts to have Congress extend those waivers. That lobbying will continue into 2025, as Congress only extended those waivers for three months in its year-end, stopgap funding bill.
The fifth most-read story of 2024 centers on perhaps the biggest lesson learned this year in healthcare innovation: Disrupting the status quo to achieve true transformation is hard. This past May Dollar General, the nation’s largest retailer by number of stores, announced that it was ending a two-year partnership with digital health provider DocGo.
The news wasn’t exactly, well, new. Walmart, Walgreens and CVS Health had all recently rolled back their primary and virtual care ambitions, highlighting the challenges that the retail and pharmacy chains were having in cracking the healthcare market. The lesson to be learned, perhaps, is that healthcare isn’t an easy nut to crack, and while new ideas from outside the industry may look great on paper, they aren’t scalable or sustainable.
The stopgap budget bill gave key telehealth and Hospital at Home waivers a three-month reprieve. Supporters now have to convince a fractured Congress and new Administration that these waivers are crucial enough to be made permanent.
Telehealth and digital health policy will remain a hot topic in early 2025. But will three months be enough time to convince a fractious Congress and new Administration of the benefits of permanent coverage?
Telehealth advocates and supporters of the Hospital at Home strategy are celebrating what amounts to a moral victory in the last-minute passage of a stopgap budget bill. The 100-page bill—which originally clocked in at 1,500 pages before it was pared down to make the grade—includes extensions of key telehealth waivers and a continuance for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) program.
But those waivers only extend another 90 days—barely enough time to schedule an in-person doctor’s visit--and several other digital health and telehealth provisions were cut.
Supporters are now continuing their full-court press on Congress to make those provisions permanent, something they’ve been working on for several years. They’re hoping the letters to lawmakers signed by hundreds of healthcare organizations and support of dozens (if not hundreds) of House and Senate members will sway Congress.
“We will immediately begin working to ensure Congress makes Medicare telehealth flexibilities and the Acute Hospital Care at Home Program permanent—or secures a much longer extension than 90 days,” Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association and executive director of ATA Action, the group’s lobbying arm, said in a press release. “Simultaneously, we will advocate vigorously to reinstate the vital provisions that were left out of this package.”
On one hand, supporters are encouraged by the fact that the telehealth and ACHAH waivers made the cut for the three-month extension—meaning Congress thinks they have enough value to continue. On the other hand, those waivers have been extended before, and the incoming Trump Administration has signaled its interest in cutting costs and reducing administrative clutter. The challenge will be on supporters to push the value in making these waivers permanent.
The final bill includes a 90-day extension (instead of two years, as was in the original bill) on several telehealth flexibilities enacted by CMS during the COVID crisis to expand coverage of and access to telehealth. They include:
Waiving geographic restrictions on telehealth coverage and use;
Expanding the list of providers able to bill Medicare for telehealth services;
Allowing audio-only telehealth services;
Easing originating site restrictions on telehealth so that the patient can receive treatment at home;
Waiving the in-person requirement for telemental health treatment;
Enabling telehealth service for hospice care; and
Enabling Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) to use telehealth.
In addition, the bill extends the CMS waiver for its AHCAH program for three months, instead of five years, enabling the more than 350 health systems following the CMS model to receive Medicare reimbursement.
Among the telehealth provisions that were cut out of the final package:
First dollar coverage of High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs);
Support for virtual care providers in the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program;
Improved coverage for digital health in home-based cardiology and pulmonary rehab programs; and
The SPEAK Act (HR 6033), which paves the way for accessible telehealth services.
CMS has already said it won’t extend the waivers any more (though the agency did include some telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutic improvements in its 2025 Physician Fee Schedule). So it's up to Congress to decide if there's enough value in the waivers to make them permanent.
William Sheahan of MedStar Health, a participant in the HealthLeaders Mastermind program, says healthcare leaders need to look beyond the technology and prepare doctors and nurses for new workflows
AI may truly be a transformative technology, but its integration into clinical care needs to be managed well before the technology is even introduced.
"How do we get our people, our nurses, our doctors, our clinicians, our revenue cycle teams, to understand how the technology supports the future of their work?" asks William Sheahan, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer at MedStar Health and executive director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation. "We can't just focus on deploying the fun new technology and expect that organically it's going to change your business, right?"
Sheahan, a participant in HealthLeaders' Mastermind program on AI in clinical care, says healthcare leaders need to focus on change management as they embrace AI. That means not only working to bring current doctors and nurses up to speed with the technology, but looking to medical schools to make sure the next generation is prepared for an AI-infused workplace.
William Sheahan, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer at MedStar Health and executive director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation. Photo courtesy MedStar Health.
"We have the imperative to swim upstream, into undergraduate medical education, in nursing schools and medical schools, and insert some of this foundational education," he says.
Sheahan says MedStar Health is pursuing an AI strategy that recognizes how the technology will change healthcare delivery, which includes the effect on the provider as well as the patient. As such, the ROI of a new tool or program looks beyond financial costs to include clinical outcomes and provider wellbeing.
That means getting buy-in from all parties, especially clinicians. Sheahan says innovation leads like to participate in town halls with system physicians to introduce new tools like ambient AI, giving them a chance to ask questions and try out the technology before it's added to their toolkit. The idea, he says, is to include clinicians in the planning so that they're invested in the process from the start.
"This isn't forced change," he points out.
Instead, he says, it's organizational change. That's what comes with a holistic technology that is being embraced by consumers as well as clinicians. Organizations that aren't already properly pursuing this in-demand innovation may otherwise be forced to react rather than act with the times.
With national issues like workforce shortages, cost concerns and increased competition for the patient/consumer plaguing the industry, healthcare leaders are challenged to hit the ground running with AI. Sheahan says he, like any other innovation executive, is excited about the potential for AI to improve clinical care, but they still need to plan out the process and understand the outcomes.
That includes understanding how data is gathered, stored and managed, processes that certainly need to be modernized. Health systems and hospitals have long been gathering data without fully understanding its potential uses. AI promises to make the best use of that data if it's guided and governed properly.
While some health systems have created AI committees or even C-suite roles to manage AI, Sheahan says separating AI from other innovative strategies can hinder progress. He's more supportive of integrating AI governance into existing management structures. In many cases, he says, a new AI tool can have multiple benefits across different departments—like an ambient listening tool that not only improves clinician note-taking but helps the rev cycle department improve coding.
"AI as a technology shouldn't be governed entirely differently than other technologies," he says.
As for the future of AI in the clinical space, Sheahan envisions an AI-enabled operating system serving the enterprise, responding to queries from pretty much anyone within the health system. The platform might help doctors map the best care plan for patients, give nurses direction on inpatient care, help the rev cycle management team deal with a prior authorization or denial, or even map out the best route for a patient to a specialist appointment across town.
"We want to show the many groups that can benefit from AI why and how to use it to make themselves more efficient," Sheahan said. "Ultimately, that is what is going to deliver ROI over time. We can make our business more efficient if we're all in this together."
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The 8-year Innovation in Behavioral Health (IBH) Model focuses on care integration and coordination, alongside screening for health inequities, to bridge behavioral and primary care services.
Federal officials have launched a new behavioral health program aimed at creating care management programs for Medicare and Medicaid patients dealing with severe mental health conditions and substance abuse disorder (SUD).
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation in Behavioral Health (IBH) Model seeks to bridge the gap between behavioral health and primary care by enabling specialty behavioral health practices, including community mental health centers, opioid treatment programs and private or public practices, to create interprofessional care teams to coordinate care.
The goal of the new program is to improve care and outcomes for the estimated 25% of all Medicare patients experiencing mental illness and the 40% of Medicaid patients dealing with a mental illness or SUD. Those patients often face barriers accessing care, resulting in poor health outcomes, and either don’t get care or wind up in emergency rooms.
The eight-year program will be launched through state Medicaid agencies in Michigan, New York, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
“Specialty behavioral health practices will be responsible for conducting screenings and assessments of behavioral and physical health, and health-related social needs, offering treatment as appropriate within their scope of practice, providing closed-loop referrals to other primary care providers, specialists, and community-based resources, and monitoring ongoing conditions,” CMS said in its announcement. “Since people with moderate to severe behavioral health conditions frequently visit behavioral health settings, this approach uses the behavioral health setting as a point of entry to identify and secure further care and facilitate close collaboration with primary and specialty care providers.”
While the practices will be developing care integration and care management strategies, they’ll also target health inequities through screenings for social determinants of health (SDOH).
“Practice participants are required to create a health equity plan (HEP) using a needs assessment of the population they serve,” CMS said. “The HEP should detail steps that practice participants will take to address the population needs and stipulate how the practice participant will address disparities that disproportionately impact their service populations.”
Additionally, the IBH Model will require practice participants to annually screen and monitor patients for underlying and/or unmet health-related social needs and make necessary referrals to other health care providers or local safety-net services,” the agency continued. “The required care management component will help ensure that eligible individuals receive the services needed to address their health-related social needs.”
They’ll also be supported with targeted investments in health information technology to improve quality reporting and data sharing.
The health system plans to expand community sites and services, beef up its chronic care management and SDOH programs, add 1,000 new employees and build a new hospital to replace the aging Advocate Trinity Hospital.
Advocate Health Care has announced an ambitious expansion into Chicago’s South Side to the tune of $1 billion.
The Illinois-based arm of the national Advocate Health network, the third largest in the country, is planning to invest $300 million in a new lakefront hospital to replace the 115-year-old Advocate Trinity Hospital. In addition, it plans to spend more than $500 million on expanded outpatient care through community programs and services, $200 million on new hospital and outpatient services addressing chronic disease and social determinants of health, and $25 million on workforce development programs.
"We have built a model that gets at the heart of chronic disease and wellness through much greater access to extensive prevention, health management tools and education designed to help South Side residents live their healthiest lives," Michelle Blakely, PhD, President of Advocate Trinity Hospital, said in a press release. "We need to provide the community with the necessary resources to stay well – where we live, work, play and worship – and that takes a comprehensive plan."
The focus of the expansion is on community health and wellness, and represents one of the largest investment ever by a health system. Executives say the plan was forged over the past year through more than 20 listening sessions with South Side residents. It addresses "significant health inequities" in those neighborhoods, including four times as many deaths due to diabetes as the North Side.
Among the planned investments:
Adding capacity to accommodate 85,000 new appointments per year.
Establishing 10 new Advocate Health Care Neighborhood Care locations.
Redesigning the health system’s financial assistance program to ensure that no one goes without care.
Launching a mobile medicine unit to provide primary care services.
Expanding access to pharmacy services, including free prescription programs.
Expanding the Advocate Food Farmacy program.
Expanding access to pre- and post-natal care.
The new hospital, to be built on 23 acres of land that now houses a former U.S. Steel Works complex, will feature 52 beds, 36 medical surgery beds, four ICU beds, eight dedicated observation beds, and a four-bed dialysis unit. It will also house a cardiac catheterization lab, enhanced testing and imaging services and a 16-bed Emergency Department. Once the new hospital is open, the old hospital will be demolished and replaced by green space.
The health system’s workforce development plans include adding 1,000 new positions within the next three years, as well as job forums and a mobile recruitment van to connect with students and others in the community.
Health systems and hospitals are ditching their competitive aspirations and joining forces to develop innovative new technologies and programs
Expensive technology, limited budgets and uncertain ROI are all combining to make healthcare innovation a challenging arena. So how are the nation’s forward-thinking health systems and hospitals responding?
They’re collaborating.
In what is often considered a competitive market, healthcare’s innovation leaders are finding value in sharing their ideas with their peers, in hopes of developing technologies and programs that can be scaled across much larger and more varied patient populations. And with the weight of multiple organizations supporting these ideas, they hope to create sustainability with more receptive payers, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Just a few months back, Providence, Novant Health, Baylor Scott & White Health and the Memorial Hermann Health System announced the launch of Longitude Health, with the three-pronged goal of transforming business models, improving health system performance and empowering healthier futures.
“Innovation is a multi-faceted strategy and we are approaching it pluralistically,” Sara Vaezy, Providence’s chief strategy and digital officer, said in an e-mail to HealthLeaders.. “Thorny operational challenges that require networks, capital, and broad expertise to come together to solve these issues at scale can be tackled in partnership across health systems.”
“The defining components of the health system strategy of the future are transformation through innovation and collaboration,” she added. “We need to position ourselves as a trusted partner and navigator of services for our communities—rather than trying to do it all ourselves. As healthcare institutions, we must now think beyond our individual organizations and core delivery models to build solutions that serve the greater good across health systems, patients, and communities.”
“We will also pursue innovative individual partnerships with organizations that have built up scale and special capabilities in certain areas,” Vaezy noted. “In some cases, we’ll also engage in innovation on our own before seeking partners. There are many roads to innovation and this accelerates one of the paths.”
The latest to join the trend is the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), which unveiled the ATA Center of Digital Excellence (CODE) this week. The new center is billed as “an innovative alliance with leading health systems dedicated to advancing the integration of digital care pathways to support patients throughout their healthcare journeys.”
CODE’s founding members are Intermountain Health, the Mayo Clinic, MedStar Health, Ochsner Health, OSF HealthCare, Sanford Health, Stanford Health Care, UPMC and West Virginia University Medicine Children’s Hospital. The center will be overseen by Elissa Baker, BSN, RN, formerly of eVisit, the FemTech Lab, Phase2 Health and KeyCare, who was named the ATA’s SVP of digital strategy and clinical Innovation in October.
The ATA is uniquely positioned to usher in a new era of collaboration within healthcare,” ATA CEO Ann Mond Johnson said in a December 12 press release. “Through CODE, we are convening top health systems to establish models that seamlessly integrate digital care into broader care delivery approaches. Telehealth is not an either/or solution but a critical addition to in-person care, addressing gaps where traditional access is limited or unavailable. With these renowned health systems, we are setting the standard for how innovation and technology can enhance, extend, and equalize access to high-quality healthcare for all."
In a more unique partnership, Mass General Brigham and Tampa General Hospital have been collaborating for more than three years, beginning with the expansion of MGB’s innovative Home Base program for veteran healthcare and wellness to Home Base Florida in 2021.
“Our collaboration with Mass General Brigham is key to advancing innovation and expanding access to world-class care across Florida,” Tampa General CEO John Couris said in an e-mail to HealthLeaders. “We’re sharing expertise and best practices to capitalize on what both systems have to offer, leading to the best possible patient outcomes.”
The two health systems have been working together on cancer care and treatments, a bone marrow transplant program and cell therapies through the TGH Cancer Institute. They’re also planning to build a new radiation center in Palm Beach Gardens, where patients will be able to access either MGB or TGH clinicians for radiation oncology, medical imaging and clinical oncology services.
“The increased collaboration between our two health systems is a reflection of our mutual goals: To enhance, innovate and be at the forefront of medicine to offer Floridians the absolute best care options while simultaneously responding to the very complex needs each person has over the course of their lives,” he added.
The health system's new Virtual Care Center aims to use the latest in digital and telehealth technology and programs to address key pain points in rural healthcare.
Sanford Health is giving its virtual care strategy a very real base of operations.
The South Dakota-based health system, the largest rural network in the country, recently opened the Sanford Virtual Care Center at its Sioux Falls campus. Executives say the 60,000-square-foot building, divided into an Education Institute, Innovation Center and Clinical Service Delivery labs, will be critical in developing, scaling and sustaining innovative technologies and programs addressing rural health needs.
“We have lots of problems with access, quality and sustainability, and we firmly believe that virtual care is the single most important tool we have to address these shortages in our rural footprint,” David Newman, MD, Sanford Health’s CMO of virtual care, said during a recent HealthLeaders podcast.
David Newman, MD, CMO of virtual care for Sanford Health Care. Photo courtesy Sanford Health Care.
The new center comes at a time when Newman and his colleagues across the country are facing acute workforce shortages. Roughly one-third of doctors will be retiring in the next 10 years, Newman says, and there will be 25% fewer rural docs by 2030. There aren’t enough new doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers coming into the pipeline, and many of those that are will be heading to urban and suburban areas, where the patient base is bigger and the pay is better.
Enter telehealth and digital health, and the idea that a patient can access any care needed at home or in a local doctor’s office or clinic, while a rural health system can reach out and either provide those services or act as the conduit between the patient and a specialist or a larger health system with those resources.
“With a click of a button on your phone, just like ordering a pizza or talking to your grandkids on FaceTime, you can see a behavioral health provider,” says Newman, noting that roughly one-quarter of all behavioral health services are now handled via virtual care.
The center serves three specific functions. The Education Institute allows Sanford Health to have a hand in training the provider of the future, offer guidance on virtual nursing, robotics, AR and VR technology, remote patient monitoring (RPM) and so-called webside manner. Through this, the health system is bringing its current workforce up to date on new strategies and creating an environment to attract new providers.
“A lot of the younger doctors coming out, a lot of the younger nurses, this is an expectation,” Newman says, “And we see it as a huge recruitment and retention tool to offer these things.”
“Some younger providers want fully virtual careers,” he adds. “They want to be able to work from home. There's a work life balance that is a much bigger thing for younger providers than it has been for older providers, and we want to be able to offer them work life balance.”
The Innovation Center gives Sanford Health an area to work with small companies and start-ups, as well as providing workshops for their own doctors and nurses to test out new ideas.
“One of the biggest problems in healthcare right now is operationalizing really great ideas,” Newman says.
The Clinical Service Delivery labs, meanwhile, gives Sanford Health an area to test out new programs that pull family and caregivers into care management, as well as testing out Hospital at Home and other home-based care concepts. One lab might be designed like an exam room in a doctor’s office, while another represents a skilled nursing facility room and a third looks like a patient’s bedroom or living room.
“A big part of healthcare is not just examining what it's like through the provider lens, but also seeing what it's like from the patient,” Newman says.” We want to know how that patient is receiving healthcare” in different environments.
“We honestly want to be very, very nimble,” he says. “We designed the center to be changed. The rooms can be flexed, [because] we really don't know where digital healthcare is going to be going in the next 10 years, and we're OK with that, that we hope it's very, very different and we hope that we're ready to be different.”
