| | January 202419UTLOOKHealthcare Tech CXO INSIGHTSBy Gerard Frunzi, Director of Virtual Care, Centura HealthTelehealth is a Powerful Tool for Achieving Health EquityThe largest opportunity for the healthcare industry is leveraging telehealth to address inequitable access to healthcare. The CDC defines "Health equity as the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health." This article highlights the opportunities to promote health equity and address disparities in healthcare delivery. Organizations led by forward-thinking providers and leaders are how we address healthcare equity in the U.S. Telemedicine has been around for well over half a century. The term was coined in the 1970s, yet there are documented telemedicine cases even back to 1959 at the University of Nebraska. The Corona Virus pandemic thrust telemedicine into most patients' lives, making it a household name as the best way to see caregivers in early 2020. Since then, the industry has settled on its new normal with patient and provider expectations around healthcare from a distance. Telehealth can do many things when it comes to addressing health equity. When evaluating factors for social determinants of health, telehealth can help with some and is limited by others. It bridges socioeconomic gaps, overcomes geographic barriers, expands access to underserved communities and individuals with disabilities, addresses language and cultural barriers, and is customizable to provide most types of care over video conferencing. Telehealth is limited by internet broadband ability and the cost of the technology at the patient site. These tenants of addressing health equity should be top of mind during the development of any new service offering.Not everyone has a smartphone or home internet. Around 19 million Americans lack broadband access at their home. Telephonic care is acceptable and works in many scenarios; it has not been well adopted as a tool for patient care due to the very poor support it has from private and government insurance. There are easy to implement solutions to address this issue. The expansion of coverage for telehealth has allowed patients to go to a local library, a local Regional Accountable Entity (RAE), or even a county public health clinic to be the host of a telemedicine visit. This is most often seen for those specialty care clinic visits that are centralized away from rural communities. There are billions of federal grant dollars over the next decade meant to have broadband access available to all homes by 2030. There are programs that help those with financial needs pay for a smartphone and data plan. As all this work progresses, we will find the industry changes to better take care of patients and community needs using video conferencing on broadband internet.`The Patient Will See You Now' by Eric Topol MD is a terrific book highlighting the new mindset for the healthcare community. Changes in the healthcare toolset and workflow processes will help address shortfalls in our industry. Interpretation in healthcare has advanced to the level that all video products should be able to provide language support Gerard Frunzi
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