Health systems are still struggling to engage patients beyond the hospital setting, with many Americans turning to payviders and retail healthcare options out of convenience. This shift is not only disrupting the continuity of care — but also driving care leakage and undermining the long-term sustainability of traditional health systems.
One Virginia-based provider recently struck a partnership that seeks to address this problem.
VHC Health teamed up with virtual physician practice HealthTap to boost patients’ access to on-demand urgent care. Through the partnership, VHC patients can access care from HealthTap’s physicians through video visits for diagnosis, treatment and prescriptions for common conditions.
The service is designed to expand convenient access to care while reducing unnecessary emergency department visits — all while ensuring continuity with VHC’s in-person providers, noted HealthTap CEO Sean Mehra.
“VHC Health is solving for 365-day access — filling the gap during evenings, weekends and holidays. By integrating HealthTap, VHC extends its reach directly into the patient’s home, ensuring that when a patient needs care at an odd hour, they stay within the VHC ecosystem rather than leaking to a disjointed third party,” he explained.
HealthTap aims to deliver a frictionless and familiar experience for patients, he added.
A patient accesses the service directly through VHC’s digital platform whenever they need to. If a patient ends up needing more than a virtual consult, like an X-ray or a specialist visit, HealthTap physicians digitally route that referral directly back to VHC’s providers.
Mehra pointed out that the financial experience is as deeply integrated as the clinical one. Patients pay their standard copay just as they would for any VHC visit because HealthTap’s billing is integrated with VHC’s existing payer contracts — meaning there is no confusion about out-of-network costs.
“[Patients] aren’t starting over with a stranger — they are accessing an extension of their medical home. It’s the convenience of tech with the trust of their local system,” Mehra declared.
VHC is HealthTap’s flagship health system partner with this deep-integration model, he noted.
VHC CEO Chris Lane described the collaboration as a comprehensive effort to further enhance the patient experience at his health system.
He highlighted VHC’s commitment to increasing access to care and said this partnership establishes the infrastructure needed to provide a more seamless patient experience.
“With the future of healthcare increasingly centered on receiving high-quality services from the comfort of home, this collaboration enables patients to access urgent medical care virtually. We specifically sought a partner that met the highest standards, including Joint Commission accreditation for telehealth,” Lane remarked.
As the collaboration goes on, he said VHC will track metrics related to patient and provider satisfaction to determine success.
Photo: Evgeniia Siiankovskaia, Getty Images
