Healthcare Provider to Expand Telehealth Research Collab With $2M Grant

Following the receipt of a $2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), MedStar Health will focus on enhancing telehealth research practices through an expansion of a collaboration with Stanford Medicine and Intermountain Healthcare.

MedStar Health, which includes 10 hospitals and more than 280 other care locations, previously established a research collaboration with Stanford Medicine and Intermountain Healthcare that aims to promote telehealth access, safety, and equity.

Now, following four-year funding from AHRQ, the organizations plan to create a patient safety learning laboratory to implement new approaches to connected care enhancements.

“Our initial research demonstrates that telehealth is delivering on its promise to provide accessible and effective care,” said Raj Ratwani, PhD, co-principal investigator for both grants, vice president of scientific affairs for the MedStar Health Research Institute, and director of the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, in a press release. “Thanks to the continued support of AHRQ, we will advance patient safety nationally by studying and scaling telehealth as a proactive safety tool while also enhancing its safe use within the diverse communities served by connected care.”

Researchers also noted that their efforts will mainly target those with chronic conditions. The research team recently published a study that analyzed more than 4.1 million adult primary care encounters that took place either through telehealth or in-person visits.

They found that telehealth use was higher among patients who had more than one visit per year compared to those who only had one visit in a year. Further, the mean number of encounters changed little from year to year for both the telehealth and in-person groups.

“While we expected to see variability in telehealth use in primary care, we were interested to learn that those patients with chronic illness and frequent primary care needs consistently replaced one to two visits per year with a telehealth visit,” said Ethan Booker, MD, study co-author, co-principal investigator for both grants, and chief medical officer of telehealth for MedStar Health, in the press release. “This finding underscores our entry into a new era of chronic care, as telehealth helps providers increase access and care continuity for patients who need it most."

With the new grant, the collaboration aims to enhance research efforts surrounding telehealth. The main areas researchers will focus on include improving safety and health through telehealth, virtual care process optimization, customization of telehealth services, and provider wellbeing.

Healthcare stakeholders are working to improve telehealth in various ways.

In July, experts spoke with mHealthIntelligence about how federally qualified health centers are fighting the digital divide. Some health centers added telehealth patient navigator roles, allowing them to focus on each patient's unique needs. They also discussed how staffing issues could curb progress in this area, making recruitment and retention necessary.

In other interviews in February, leaders from provider organizations noted that health equity is essential to consider while creating remote patient monitoring programs. Often, racial minorities and rural residents face barriers to care and various other disadvantages. The leaders stated that health systems must make all possible efforts to enable access for all when adding to care delivery workflows.