ATA, DiMe Launch Initiative to Support Virtual-First Telehealth Programs

A new partnership among telehealth and digital health organizations aims to create a framework for healthcare providers developing “virtual first” programs.

The IMPACT (vIrtual-first Medical PrActice CollaboraTion) initiative was unveiled this week by the American Telemedicine Society and the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe). Consisting of a broad base of insurers, vendors, investors and trade groups, it aims to separate itself from programs that are added onto or integrated into existing care platforms and instead focus on services that exist solely in the virtual health space.

“Virtual-first practices have staff and clinical workflows that are based exclusively on caring for patients remotely, and that don’t have to be reverse-engineered into existing workflows,” DiMe Executive Director Jen Goldsack said in a press release. “Virtual-first practices use technologies for patients to monitor their health at home, as well as offer care teams that might look a little different. They often include and coordinate needed diagnostics, therapeutics, remote patient monitoring, mental health professional consultations, coaching, nutrition consultation, together with physician services, all delivered outside of traditional healthcare facilities.”

The effort targets not only best practices and guidelines for developing these programs, but collaborations with the VC and payer industries to support them. It also takes aim at criticism that virtual care programs aren’t valued the same as in-person care.

“Virtual-first practices experience many of the same challenges faced by all delivery systems and clinicians that practice telehealth, including difficulty securing reimbursement and outdated regulatory and licensing models,” ATA CEO Ann Mond Johnson said in the press release. “They also have lacked a supportive ecosystem to help them thrive.”

Aside from the ATA and DiMe, founding members for the initiative include Validic, Omada Health, Aspen Rx Health, Guidewell Health, Takeda Digital Ventures and Remedy. The effort will also be supported by research from Rock Health, a seed fund whose partners include the Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and GE.

The group’s chairman is Don Jones, a former executive with Qualcomm Life and former chief digital officer at the Scripps Research Translational Institute who’s played significant roles on several digital health companies since then.

“Virtual-first medical providers must offer complete turnkey healthcare solutions rather than the usual approach where patients are shuttled off from one siloed specialist to another only then to be sent to a diagnostic,” Jones said in the press release. “IMPACT will support this new subfield, convening representatives from across the ecosystem necessary to help virtual-first practices thrive.”