Dive Brief:
- A new study by global analytics firm Towers Watson has concluded that telemedicine could save U.S. companies more than $6 billion per year.
- The researchers, who surveyed companies with at least 1,000 employees, found that 37% of respondents expect to offer telemedicine by 2015; 34% of respondents are considering offering such services by 2016 or 2017; and 22% of respondents already offer telemedicine consultations.
- Towers Watson predicts that the percentage of employers offering telemedicine will grow from 22% to 37% annually, which represents a 68% increase.
Dive Insight:
While the $6 billion per year savings number is eye-catching, it may be a bit unrealistic, as achieving such savings would require all employees and their dependents to replace face-to-face provider interactions with telemedical services, researchers found. This is unlikely to happen in the near future, if at all. Employees of large companies, like other consumers, are likely to be unwilling to give up face-to-face contact completely.
That being said, it seems clear that employers have the chance to save a great deal of money on healthcare services even if the employee adoption is moderate at best. Given the potential for controlling costs, it seems that employers will be likely to do everything they can to foster telemedicine use, including special pricing that would make telemedicine attractive enough to lure employees who haven't tried it.
Still, this shift won't come easily. For telemedicine to become part of the everyday fabric of employee healthcare, it will require a big change in both doctor and patient mindsets, regulatory support from the states in which the employers operate and health plan willingness to reimburse for such services (which has been scant in the past). Given these constraints, it seems likely that self-insured employers making their own calls about reimbursement will have a leg up getting providers paid for telemedicine services. Perhaps they will have to be the trailblazers here.