Addressing a diverse crowd of more than 300 industry leaders, payers and academics, Teladoc Health CEO Chuck Divita kicked off the company’s 19th annual Forum event in Nashville by sharing his perspectives on the future of healthcare and virtual care innovation.
Discussing the current “complex and dynamic healthcare environment,” Divita touched on several macro forces impacting healthcare, including affordability of care, increased prevalence of chronic conditions, unmet mental health needs, higher patient expectations, provider capacity pressures and the acceleration of technology. He then outlined several areas where the system has an opportunity to “challenge conventional wisdom” and leverage virtual care to make a difference.
Unlocking the full potential of virtual care
Teladoc Health has built trusted partnerships with exceptional organizations around the world. Those alliances have allowed the company to deliver care virtually at an unprecedented scale, helping millions of people globally to gain better control of their health. For more than 20 years, the company’s innovations expanded access to care and integrated care across physical and mental chronic conditions to put the whole patient at the center. Still, we are just scratching the surface of what virtual care can do. “We think that virtual care is also too narrowly viewed sometimes, and we're missing out on these opportunities to leverage the scale and the impact and the role that it can play in the broader ecosystem,” said Divita. “We believe virtual care is a performance multiplier that can address these macro challenges and, as part of the health ecosystem, help people live their healthiest lives.”
As Divita explained, the company is leading this next level of transformation—the orchestration era—to deliver, enable and dynamically coordinate care across patients and care providers, platforms and partners, specialties and settings, virtually and in the community. Teladoc Health is in a unique position to advance this—through its technology, services and workflow—to create better access and experiences and improve cost.
Defining care for a new era
To advance this vision, Divita outlined how Teladoc Health is prioritizing key value drivers to orchestrate better care across patients, care providers, platforms and partners and serve as a catalyst for better health.
- Connection across patients, providers and partners to enable seamless care among modalities and care settings, both virtually and in the community.
- Collaboration with care teams, fueled by clinical excellence, technology and services, so they can perform at their highest level while delivering care and addressing different health needs—physical and mental, simple and complex, urgent and ongoing.
- Care experiences that are elevated by technology and insights, making moments of care more complete, personalized and even more impactful.
- Partnership at scale, helping clients around the world draw insights from other workplaces, hospitals, health plans and public health systems by offering them unmatched visibility into best practices and health journeys.
- Measurable outcomes that demonstrate how virtual care is a powerful force in the healthcare system.
“This isn’t just our vision or ambition. We’re making it happen—by investing in innovation and collaborating closely with our clients,” said Divita.
- Examples of how Teladoc Health is already moving forward on this evolution include:
Acquisition of Catapult Health to deliver VirtualCheckups that help people who might not know they have a condition get access to the care they need
- Expanding the Prism platform to help connect people with services to address unique needs and close gaps in care
- Establishing Connected Care Partnerships to connect patients with specialty virtual care providers like Hinge, Carrum and Sword
- Launching an AI-enabled virtual sitting solution to help identify and address potential patient safety issues, like falls in the inpatient care setting, and extend capacity of scarce resources
- Working with clients in Canada and Europe to leverage virtual care technology and services to address capacity needs, support rural health initiatives, help keep emergency facilities open and many other use cases
- Building Wellbound EAP to provide more people with access to work/life support, as well as BetterHelp’s consumer-centric mental health services
“As Teladoc Health partners with its customers on these and many other innovations, just know we're going to be driven by a passion for impact, for urgency and a deep commitment in what we're doing,” concluded Divita. “We have a shared purpose with our customers to help people—our families, our colleagues, our communities—and make healthcare better.”
