Intermountain Healthcare, a not-for-profit health system based in Salt Lake City, Utah, has partnered with American Well to launch a video visits app for patients. The offering, called Intermountain Connect Care, will be launched in 2016.
“Connect Care is an opportunity for Intermountain to engage with patients and provide a new option that complements traditional health care,” Intermountain’s chief medical officer, Brent Wallace, said in a statement. “It expands access to Intermountain’s high-quality care, allowing patients more choice and access to care, regardless of time or location. It offers medical care after regular clinic hours, on weekends, and anyplace that an internet connection is available.”
Patients will be able to use the app to communicate with Intermountain clinicians via video chat and receive medical advice as well as treatment for certain conditions, including a stuffy or runny nose, sore throat, eye infections, ear ache, lower back pain, joint pain, and bronchitis.
If the user is an existing Intermountain patient, the data from their visit will be sent to Intermountain's EMR, but either way they will receive an email summary of the call. The service will cost $49 per visit and it will be available 24-7.
Earlier this summer, Cleveland Clinic announced that it partnered with American Well to create an app for Ohio residents, called MyCare Online, that offers patients 24-hour access to a medical professional for urgent care needs. MyCare Online’s service also costs $49 per visit.
In the past few months, a number of video visits vendors have mentioned that providers are beginning to eclipse payors as their largest customer segment. Roy Schoenberg, CEO at American Well, told MobiHealthNews recently that this is largely a result of ACOs and a shared savings mentality even among fee-for-service providers.
“We have strategically decided to build infrastructures for the use of telehelath by those health systems, but we have absolutely underestimated popularity, the adoption rates by these organizations," he said at the time. "I would even go as far as to say that the fastest-growing part of our business in 2015 has shifted from the health plans into health systems. They are the bigger buyer in 2015 vs the payers, who are, by the way, not stopping anything, it’s just that health systems are buying more than they do.”
