Centralized care, with a hospital as the hub, is the standard in the U.S. today. But this familiar model is changing rapidly, as providers embrace remote care at scale. After decades of experimentation, why now?”Five to seven years from now, well look back on this time period as when the inflection happened, when remote care flipped from eclectic proof of concepts and pilots to become the new standard of care,” said David P. Ryan, General Manager, Health & Life Sciences Sector, at Intel. Instead of the first touch being an urgent care clinic or, more likely, an emergency room, Ryan envisions a time when itll be an app, an email or a video call.While evidence has been accumulating for 20-plus years that telehealth is cost-effective, Ryan said a giant obstacle in the U.S. had been reimbursement rules. These have only begun to change in the past two years. Telemedicine, telehealth and remote monitoring is accelerating dramatically now because reimbursement has changed for everybody, he said. Payers have seen the benefitsup to 75 percent fewer readmissions, up to $150,000 savings per patientyearand are even moving forward on recommendations to reimburse providers when they teach homebound patients how to use remote-monitoring gear or conduct a virtual check-in with a patient.

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