Thread by @jayparkinson

I spoke this morning at Stony Brook University at a telehealth conference. My first slide: “I’m really disappointed in telehealth.” Here’s why: 16 years in, the industry leader did 1.1M video visits in the last 4 quarters. There are 1.1B doctor visits per year in America.

A recent study also showed that out of 20M people, 0.51% of people filed a telehealth claim.

Now, stats from Kaiser, from the CEO and from the NEJM study published yesterday. mhealthintelligence.com/news/kaiser-ce…

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Here’s what those video visit numbers look like. Kind of a doubling every year but then it looks like they flattened out (but time will tell). Point is, this is about 1.25% of people are interested in this wonky healthcare invention.

So, video visits are a serious bust. But what’s been, by far, the most successful healthcare service innovation in decades? Urgent care. By far.Massive increases in utilization.

There are now 7,700 urgent care centers in America. If each does 40 visits a day, that’s 110M urgent care visits a year, which is 10% of all doctor visits in America. It’s also 100x the volume of video visits.

And to put this all in perspective, here’s the number of claims per 1,000. Poor telemedicine. A whole bunch of nothing. And at this rate, it’ll be important in 50 years.

So, in summary. People will pay a premium for access as urgent care has proven. But people will also reject gimmicks capable of treating a very tiny sliver of actual real everyday problems. People will also reject things like PCPs who make you wait for weeks.

Urgent care. The most successful innovation in healthcare services ever. What’s so innovative about urgent care centers?

It’s cheaper than the ER.

Damn America. Can’t we do better than that?