Findings from HCFO-Funded Study Featured in Article on Telemedicine

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Employers and health plans are increasingly interested in telemedicine as a mode of care delivery, and many are now offering either full or partial virtual care services. As Joseph Kvedar discusses in Medpage Today’s KevinMD.com, provider organizations are also wading into this new business model as an extension of brick and mortar clinics. Kvedar references recent HCFO-funded work from R. Adams Dudley, University of California, San Francisco, that found quality of care varied greatly across companies providing virtual visits for common acute illnesses. The study findings highlight that telemedicine is in its early stages of widespread adoption, and providers and consumers need to be informed of its benefits and limitations. In his HCFO-funded study, Dudley and colleagues examined the processes and quality of virtual medical care for minor acute illnesses to inform stakeholders about monitoring and paying for virtual care and to identify ways to improve this model of care delivery.