| | APRIL - 20218UTLOOKHealthcare Tech IN MY OPINIONHow the Pandemic is Opening the Digital Front Door to Healthcare AccessBy Lisa Sershen, Chief Digital Officer, Westmed Medical GroupThere is no doubt that the pandemic has hastened the adoption of technology in healthcare. Around the world, EMR and EHR programs are now considered the basic standard of care when 20 years ago, only the most innovative healthcare organizations were able to invest in this technology. Just as the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act of 2009 spurred the widespread adoption of EMR technology across the country, the CARES act, which issued waivers to grant payment parity between telehealth and in person doctor's visits, resulted in telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM) becoming a widely adopted solution to safe caregiving.The truth is the demand for this technology already existed but there were regulatory barriers to accessing this care before the pandemic. One interesting statistic we found in our own practice when analyzing our telehealth usage trends after the initial lockdown from April to June 2020, was that our largest demand for telehealth visits actually came from the 60+ year old population. Out of more than 80,000 online appointments conducted at Westmed during that time period, our 60+ population used telehealth 136% more than our 18-30 year old population. This revealed to us that our preconceived notions about this demographic being less" tech savvy" and less willing to use new technology may have been exaggerated and that adoption of telehealth among an older population is
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