Mercy Health Launches New Direct-to-Consumer Telehealth Service

Mercy Health is expanding its direct-to-consumer telehealth platform with a new service that connects callers to physicians and advanced practice providers.

Mercy on Call follows in the footsteps of the Midwestern-based 45-hospital health system’s Nurse on Call, which links callers to nurses for less acute concerns. Mercy officials say the new service was driven by a need for more care options during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Patients were looking for more virtual care,” Justin Huynh, Mercy’s vice president of population health, said in a press release. “We quickly delivered with even more video visit options, but sometimes a phone call is faster and easier for patients – especially late at night or on weekends. Nurse on Call has always been busy for that reason, so adding physicians and advanced care providers to expand capabilities of the team made complete sense.”

The DTC telehealth space had been an up-and-coming market prior to COVID-19, with health systems and hospitals looking for an easy way to treat patients with non-urgent concerns who would otherwise visit the doctor’s office or emergency room or even ignore the concern.

The size and scope of these platforms vary with each health system. Some offer synchronous telehealth, or virtual visits with care providers with video, while others offer phone-based or asynchronous (store-and-forward) services, which prompt the patient to fill out and submit a questionnaire, which is then reviewed by a care provider within a short period of time.

Along with all things telehealth-related, the pandemic pushed many more care providers to replace in-person services with virtual services, to reduce the risk of infection for both patients and providers. Those health systems are now looking to make those services permanent.

At Mercy, the idea was to ramp up a service that focused on pediatric patients and had doctors on call. The new service targets adult patients, giving them an immediate link to providers and helping them to avoid costly ER trips or visits to the doctor’s office.

Officials say the new service is “an extension of the local care team,” with access to the patient’s electronic health record and the ability to issue prescriptions.