Teladoc-InTouch Health Deal Is a Move Toward Telehealth Integration

Teladoc Health is looking to combine telehealth and telemedicine with a major acquisition announced over the weekend.

The Texas-based developer of consumer-to-provider telehealth solutions is adding provider-to-provider services with its planned purchase of InTouch Health. Announced prior to the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference this week in San Francisco, the $600 million deal shakes up the upper echelons of connected health and pushes the industry even further toward integrated, enterprise-level virtual care.

“The combination of these organizations will create the clear leader in comprehensive virtual care solutions for hospitals and health systems, both inside and outside the four walls of the traditional care facility,” Teladoc Health CEO Jason Gorevic said in an e-mail to mHealthIntelligence this weekend. “This announcement comes at a time when demand for virtual care services within the provider market is poised for significant growth.”

“As the population ages, combined with chronic conditions increasing, the need for care is outpacing what traditional health facilities, and the supply of specialists, can efficiently handle,” he added. “Providers are increasingly looking to virtual care to address these issues. This acquisition enables providers to offer one integrated platform for patients throughout their care journey and cover the full range of acuity – from acute to chronic, including everyday needs – across all sites of care inclusive of home, retail, hospital and more.”

According to research conducted last year by J.P. Morgan, some 40 percent of hospitals and health systems are planning to increase their budgets to accommodate new virtual care services, a telling statistic as the healthcare industry moves toward value-based care.

"Now is the perfect time for us to join together with Teladoc Health and deliver to hospitals and health systems everywhere what they've been asking for - a single, enterprise solution to support their virtual care strategies and enable them to better engage with patients at every point along their healthcare journey," InTouch Health CEO Joseph M. DeVivo said in a press release. "Whether it's extending clinical capabilities, augmenting physician resources or supporting optimized outcomes, we are that trusted single partner to support them."

Launched in 2002, California-based InTouch jumped onto the stage roughly two years ago when it announced, at the American Telemedicine Association conference, the acquisition of REACH Health, just a few months after picking up TruClinic. At the same time, top competitor American Well announced its own plans to acquire Avizia, setting up something of an arms race for telehealth consolidation.

“Historically, telehealth providers offer only a solution for a segment of the patient care continuum,” InTouch Health officials said in the January 2018 press release announcing the TruClinic deal. “This has forced health systems to acquire and integrate solutions from multiple vendors, often creating interoperability challenges for physicians to care for their patients as well as data management continuity for health systems.”

With this latest acquisition, InTouch Health aims to move closer to combining telehealth services delivered outside the health system with telemedicine services coordinated between different parts of the health system, making it easier for providers to not only deliver care but consult with colleagues and specialists to improve the value of that care.