Community Health Systems, the largest for-profit health system in the United States, has tapped American Well to bring remote visit services to its primary care patients.

Starting with local networks in Oklahoma and Washington and continuing into Arizona and Pennsylvania in the coming months, CHS will begin rolling out American Well's VirtualHealthNow platform, which offers urgent primary care on weekends and after regular business hours. Through the service patients will have access to local community physicians via their smartphone, tablet, or computer.

"Healthcare consumers increasingly are seeking care that is easier to access and more convenient," Dr. Lynn Simon, president of clinical services and chief quality officer for CHS, said in a statement. "In a highly connected and mobile world, it makes sense for us to leverage technology to deliver non-emergent care directly to patients in a manner they prefer."
CHS, which operates 198 affiliated hospitals in 29 states, has been using telemedicine for specialty care for some time, but this is the system's first telemedicine offering for primary care patients.

American Well has been aggressively pursuing health systems as customers of late -- or, as CEO Roy Schoenberg told MobiHealthNews in September, health systems are aggressively pursuing telemedicine as pressure mounts to move from fee for service care structures to value-based alternatives.

“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," he said at the time. "They are the bigger buyer in 2015 versus the payers, who are, by the way, not stopping anything, it’s just that health systems are buying more than they do.”

American Well drove that point home in October when they launched an app for Intermountain Healthcare, a large Utah-based integrated care network. Prior to that, they also powered an app that the Cleveland Clinic made available to all Ohio residents seeking telemedicine services.