Technology Boosts Care Delivery, Population Health Efforts Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

Prior to the pandemic, telehealth was relegated to communication between hospitals and clinicians at Ochsner. The health system was right on the cusp of making the service direct-to-patient and bringing it into the ambulatory space, and the Covid-19 crisis became precisely the push they needed, Oravetz said. In 2019, the system completed 3,000 ambulatory telehealth visits. That figure has jumped to over 300,000 in 2020 so far.

It also became a means of survival for most clinical organizations, he said. The high demand from patients for telehealth services and the consequent rapid deployment at health systems speaks to the service's lasting nature, which will likely continue to see high use beyond the pandemic, Oravetz added.