Kaiser virtual-visits growth shows the technology’s potential
Modern Healthcare December 4, 2014
Many of Kaiser Permanente’s regional systems are already performing greater than 50% of visits virtually—through mobile, or secure messaging, or video, Jamie Ferguson, the system’s vice president of health IT strategy and policy, said at an IT event this week.
That level of virtual visit usage demonstrates that Kaiser is picking up the pace of virtual visit technology. Earlier in the year, Permanente Medical Group CEO Robert Pearl wrote in Health Affairs that virtual visits had grown from 4.1 million in 2008 to about 10.5 million by 2013 in Kaiser Permanente Northern California. And Pearl elaborated that he expected the number of virtual visits to exceed the number of in-person visits by 2016 in Northern California; Ferguson’s remarks show that...