NY Hospital, Walgreens Launch Store-based Telehealth

NewYork-Presbyterian and Walgreens are placing self-serve kiosks in Duane Reed drugstores in New York and through Walgreens’ website, Healthcare DIVE reports.

The  kiosks are private, secure rooms with medical devices such as thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and dermascopes patients use while consulting board-certified emergency physicians. This appends Walgreen’s Boots Alliance, which also partners with Optum’s MedExpress to launch urgent care centers attached to the chain’s stores.

A Sea Change

A recent Foley & Lardner survey shows that three-fourths of healthcare organizations offered or planned to offer telemedicine services in  2017. Nearly a third of organizations tracking return on investment cited telehealth related savings of 20 percent or more. In 2014, the law firm’s survey showed 87 percent of respondents doubted patients would be using the virtual care by 2017.

NewYork Presbyterian President and CEO Steven Corwin recently told attendees at an Axios event that this year, his health system performed about 10,000 telehealth visits. “I thought this was something patients wouldn’t accept,” he said. “Quite the contrary. The Net Promoter Score of the telepsychiatry consult is 95. The Net Promoter score of Netwflix is 75. We are talking about a sea change in the way that we’re delivering healthcare.”

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Brad Ericson

Director of Publishing at AAPC

Brad Ericson, MPC, CPC, COSC, has been director of publishing for more than 11 years. Before AAPC he was at Optum for 13 years and Aetna Health Plans prior to that. He has been writing and publishing about healthcare since 1979. He received his Bachelor's in Journalism from Idaho State University and his Master's of Professional Communication degree from Westminster College of Salt Lake City.

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