NextGen Healthcare announced its partnership with telehealth vendor OTTO Health to bring virtual visit capability to NextGen Enterprise clients.
This partnership integrates the OTTO Health telehealth application with the NextGen Enterprise platform, allowing clients a way to meet consumer demand, expand patient access and volume, and reduce overhead. While all patients will have the convenience of seeing their NextGen provider without needing to be present for a face to face encounter, this will particularly benefit patients in rural areas, senior citizens, and patients with disabilities that otherwise would have difficulty traveling to their physician.
An Advisory Board survey conducted in 2017 found that 77% of patients preferred telehealth options. Currently, more than 30 states in the U.S. legislatively mandate that a virtual visit is reimbursed by commercial payers at the same rate as an in-office visit.
A key component of NextGen Healthcare’s Patient Engagement strategy is enabling convenient, at-home consultations via real-time virtual visits to improve patient access, engagement, satisfaction, outcomes and cost. With this new capability, patients can virtually connect with their physicians from any web-enabled device with a camera and microphone, including smartphones and tablets.
A 2017 Harris Poll study found an estimated 50 million U.S. consumers would be open to switching primary care providers if they were given access to video visits, an increase of 33 million over the past two years. NextGen Healthcare provides expanded, virtual visit capabilities to address current demands in today’s rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem.
