CareCloud CEO predicts what's around the corner for telehealth

Q. What were some of the changes you saw at CareCloud during the pandemic when it came to telehealth? So that's also one of the drivers today from the adoption perspective: It's becoming easier and easier for the users to start adapting to the telehealth technology. In terms of when the pandemic started, if you think about the numbers in December 2019 or January 2020, one-tenth of about 1% of the total appointments were telehealth related. Our overall telehealth appointments have increased by about 114 times from the beginning of 2020. When we go back and look at our numbers, even today, behavioral health stands about 400 times more appointments versus the beginning of 2020, which was almost negligible. Regionally speaking, as of October of this year, the highest increases were in the Midwest, and the Northeast region saw the highest telehealth adoption as a percentage of overall appointments. We've been obviously hearing a lot about the potential end of the public health emergency and what effect that might have on telehealth utilization. A. We are looking at it as virtual care – not only just telehealth. When I talk about virtual care, one aspect is, yes, the basic telehealth virtual appointment versus the face-to-face visits. I think we will see more and more utilization of telehealth, remote patient monitoring, chronic care management and all of these related things in the years to come. There is a high probability that, even if the public health emergency is lifted in 2022, some of these telehealth-related initiatives will continue, maybe in a slightly different shape or form.