Tandigm Health, a venture launched in April 2014 by Independence Blue Cross and DaVita HealthCare Partners, which manages physician practices in Pennsylvania, has partnered with video visits service TouchCare.
“Medicine and the doctor-patient relationship are very personal," Dr. Anthony Coletta, Tandigm Health’s president and CEO said in a statement. "Enabling our primary care physicians to connect with their patients face to face by video keeps the care personal, but also provides both access and convenience. Enabling our physicians and care teams to connect to their own patients, as well as to other health providers for video calls on TouchCare, helps create truly connected communities of care. This approach embodies combining the best parts of things new and old to create an exceptional health care experience for our patients.”
Tandigm will roll out TouchCare's offering to more than 350 physicians in its network. Physicians can use the program to communicate with patients about test results, medication refills, and chronic condition management as well as to contact specialists about patients.
Initially, Tandigm Health will roll the program out to its high-risk patients, who are already talking to Tandigm Health's team on the phone and Tandigm Health's medical directors, who will communicate with participating primary care physicians. Eventually, Tandigm Health will roll the program out to additional patients for both provider-to-patient and provider-to-provider communication.
At the end of last year, TouchCare raised $4 million in a round led by strategic investor Mosaic Health Solutions, a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
Video visits services have made news a number of times so far this year, from big funding rounds and an IPO to partnerships with payors and providers.
Just last week, Intermountain Healthcare, a not-for-profit health system based in Salt Lake City, Utah, partnered with American Well to launch a video visits app for patients. The offering, called Intermountain Connect Care, will be launched in 2016.
