What the Crisis-Adoption of Telehealth Can Teach Tech Leaders

What lessons can this crisis adoption of telehealth teach us about spurring technology adoption more generally?

What lessons can this crisis adoption of telehealth teach us about spurring technology adoption more generally? When looking at the healthcare industry, telehealth is not a new technology – it’s been around since at least the 1950s – but we didn’t see large-scale adoption until 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, government and commercial payers relaxed burdensome “site of care” restrictions and raised telehealth reimbursement rates to at or near parity with in-person care. In other words, if an organization had any experience with telehealth before the pandemic – even if it was only one person in a much larger practice – they were more likely to use telehealth at a higher level than organizations that didn’t have that prior experience. If we believe that virtual care has a place in care delivery, then healthcare provider organizations should identify early adopters and help them become evangelists of that technology.