Rethinking Telemedicine
An estimated 96 percent of large employers offer telemedicine services to their employees. While independent services like Teladoc have been around for more than a decade, now most insurance providers offer their own telemedicine programs as an add-on service to employers.
Health plan sponsors have added these programs to combat the rising cost of emergency room and urgent care services. However, as employer adoption of telemedicine grows, it hasn’t become any easier to determine if the goal of reducing cost is being achieved. In fact, some research shows that telemedicine may actually be increasing health plan costs. (more…)