Virtual Care: The Solution to Patient Access and Staffing Limitations

It is not a secret that the healthcare industry is struggling with patient access due to staffing limitations. Patients are left waiting several months to establish with a primary care provider or specialist. Even once established, they are rarely able to be seen in the moment they need care. The solution to these issues is not as simple as hiring more employees or building more clinics because there is just not enough staff for the demand. What can healthcare leaders do to improve access for their community when same-day, follow-up, or new patient needs arise? Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was not much we could do other than overwhelm our urgent care or emergency departments and ask patients to wait, but thankfully, we can now offer synchronous video visits or asynchronous messaging when in-person care is not available in the timeframe patients expect.

The ability to offer virtual care not only provides access, convenience, and affordability for the patient but also presents providers and clinical staff with flexibility in where they work and how they approach care. Understanding that burnout is a significant contributor to healthcare staffing challenges, staff can feel some relief with the ability to work from home or see more patients virtually while working in a brick-and-mortar clinic. Providers offering virtual care to their patients also express a great sense of pride, knowing they can help patients when they need care the most in the environment they feel most safe – their home. From an infrastructure standpoint, when a clinic schedule includes video visits, more patients can be treated with the same number of providers and less clinical staff directly addressing any staffing shortages.

This all sounds easy, right? It is a start for providers to offer more video visits or asynchronous messaging for their established patients, but there is often still a gap between new patients to primary care and specialty care, especially for same-day needs. Creating a centralized team of providers and clinical staff trained in various specialties that work from home but have extended hours can provide an avenue for same-day needs that can be treated virtually by video visits or e-visit messaging. This centralized team can also be the entry point to educate patients when they truly need to be seen in person, allowing clinic locations to spend time on the conditions that need physical exams.

Same-day virtual care has often been thought of as simply an urgent care solution, and we see many non-health system products in the market offering this type of care. However, virtual care is simply a mode of delivery and must be what we lean on to address access not only for episodic needs but also to establish care and address follow-up concerns. If providers are clear on the criteria that require in-person visits, everything else can be pushed to virtual to free up clinicians and staff to have a manageable workload and provide sooner patient visits. The benefit of virtual care is clear. How we use it will make or break your patient access strategy. If healthcare leaders intentionally offer synchronous and asynchronous virtual care throughout their healthcare system for several use cases, patients will access more timely care, providers will experience a balanced workload, and clinical staff can be efficiently scheduled to support the volume.