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Zipnosis.com

Do You Have to Sacrifice Clinical Quality forConvenience?

People are busy these days. And making a trip to the doctor either eats into

working hours or free time. That’s why patients are demanding alternatives to the

ways they access care.

This demand has forced health systems to take a leap of faith and offer

telemedicine services. Some of which are based on outsourced clinical support. But

can health systems depend on outsourced telemedicine vendors to provide quality

care that adheres to national best practices? Can patients be certain the diagnoses

and treatments they receive are accurate and clinically adherent?

JAMA Study Finds Guideline Adherence in LiveVideo Visits Spotty

Capturing quality metrics for the telemedicine space has been tricky. But

researchers at the University of California at San Francisco decided to try anyway.

They evaluated the care provided by eight telemedicine vendors against national

best practices. It should be noted that Zipnosis was not part of the study.

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Results of this 2-year study were published in the May edition of JAMA Internal

Medicine, and were not encouraging. Over the 599 virtual visits studied, adherence

to national best practice protocols for care ranged from 34.4 to 66.1 percent. The

variation range increased for treatment of viral pharyngitis and acute

rhinosinusitis (sinusitis), with clinicians adhering to guidelines anywhere from 12.8

percent to 82.1 percent of the time.

So, what did all eight of the companies evaluated have in common? All were direct-

to-consumer telemedicine providers that exclusively use synchronous – or live –

video technology, apparently lacking the use of effective clinical decision support

tools to ensure guideline adherence, to treat patients.

Convenience without Compromise

While the results of this study don’t bode well for outsourced and direct-to-

consumer telemedicine vendors that rely primarily on video, high quality virtual

care is within reach. An internal review of more than 1,700 asynchronous patient

encounters through two major health systems for treatment of acute sinusitis on

the Zipnosis platform had contrasting results to the JAMA study – a guideline

adherence rate of 95 percent.

The backbone of this success is

the adaptive online interview

embedded within the Zipnosis

platform, which guides patients

through a structured interview

grounded in evidence-based

national best practices. Once

the interview is complete,

clinicians receive a

comprehensive clinical note

and are then guided through

curated diagnosis and

treatment options based on patient inputs – the �nal diagnosis is issued by a local

provider, not an outsourced clinician.

The whole process leaves little room for error; harried clinicians won’t miss a

question and organically designed clinical decision support means patients get the

right care quickly and consistently. Best of all, since Zipnosis’ partners use their

own clinicians, they can directly monitor and improve clinical quality without the

hassle of working through a 3rd party clinical team.

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Patients are demanding more convenient access to healthcare. The data is clear:

Traditional, direct-to-consumer, outsourced telemedicine services that address

patient convenience face challenges in the area of clinical quality. In the absence of

a better alternative, this would be �ne. But it is time to stop compromising and

expect virtual care to improve access and quality at the same time. At least, that’s

what we believe and are proving here at Zipnosis.  

Related

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Questioned by Study

Can Virtual Care Reverse Clerical

Burden Induced Physician

Burnout?

Non-Traditional Competition for

Health Systems

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