Heading into the third year of the pandemic, virtual care has become more ubiquitous than ever before, and health plans are responding with virtual first health plans that can improve access to care. UnitedHealthcare's Karen Silgen joins the podcast to discuss the rise of virtual care and the recent launch of NavigateNOW.
Following a significant rise in virtual care during the pandemic, insurers see new opportunities to connect members with virtual first health plans that can expand access to care and help providers manage chronic disease. New offerings – including UnitedHealthcare's NavigateNOW – are providing 24/7 access to primary, behavioral and urgent care in a way that can help patients easily navigate the health system. Karen Silgen, vice president of virtual care at UnitedHealthcare, joins the Weekly Dose podcast to discuss the growing interest in virtual first health plans and the impact they can have for providers and consumers.
Ira Apfel
Hello and welcome to UnitedHealth Groups Weekly Dose podcast where we'll get you up to speed on the latest trends shaping the future of health care. The Weekly Dose is now on Apple podcast and Spotify, so please be sure to subscribe.
Health insurers are quickly rolling out virtual first health plans, hoping to continue the boom in virtual care usage that started during the pandemic. Centene, CVS Health, Aetna and UnitedHealth Group all recently announced new virtual care offerings. The virtual offerings take different paths; however, some emphasize but don't require that primary care starts online according to a Fortune and Kaiser Health News story. Others are aimed directly to consumers and still others are sold directly to employers.
Meanwhile, in October, UnitedHealthcare launched NavigateNOW a virtual first health plan that will be offered to employers and nine markets in 2022. The company's 60,000 Optum physicians will oversee the individual's virtual, primary, urgent and behavioral health services.
What all the insurers believe is that virtual care will help lower costs for consumers and also provide a better health care experience. Here to make sense of the virtual care landscape is Karen Silgen, she's the vice president of virtual care at UnitedHealthcare.
Karen Silgen, welcome to the podcast.
Karen Silgen
Hi there, it's a delight to speak with you today.
Ira Apfel
So, let's level set the discussion here. How would you define virtual care? What is it?
Karen Silgen
Put simply, virtual care is health care that is delivered over technology. Virtual care encompasses all the ways health care professionals can remotely interact with their patients. So, this could include delivery or the treatment of care, patient education, a virtual check in for a doctor's appointments, monitoring a patient's vital signs or even follow up after a health care visit. And it also includes both medical and behavioral health such as urgent care, primary care, wellness and chronic condition management. And the technology that's used could be audio video conferencing, smartphones, desktop computers, or even texting and emails.
Ira Apfel
So very, very broad, they can accomplish a lot to put it mildly. Is that correct?
Karen Silgen
That's correct. Historically, telemedicine was defined as delivering care over technology. And with the advent of technology and just so many other uses, it is certainly brought under cross health care.
Ira Apfel
I'm curious, why are we seeing more insurers launch virtual care products?
Karen Silgen
It's a very unique time right now. Without question, COVID-19 dramatically accelerated the adoption of virtual care and virtual care surge this year alone with more than 2,800% compared to pre pandemic levels. This illustrates that not only providers are using virtual care, but that consumers are ready too. And health plans see all the possibilities around what virtual care can provide. And our opportunity at UnitedHealth Group is to reach people where they are engaged with them more regularly and ultimately improve health care outcomes.
Ira Apfel
So, we're seeing a ton of growth and a ton of interest, in part, or maybe in large part, because of the pandemic. Have we seen uptake in virtual care and telehealth diminished at all now that the pandemic is cooling off a little bit?
Karen Silgen
Virtual care is ultimately here to stay. It's surged when a lot of the health care provider offices were closed in early 2020, and we've seen medical visits trail off a little bit. But one of the things that's been amazing is that behavioral health visits are still the majority of visits are being delivered via virtual care and that's been consistent since the pandemic. And we anticipate as more and more providers and consumers get comfortable with the technology, that the percent of visits will increase as well.
Ira Apfel
I've heard, or read, that virtual care can make things more affordable. So, I'm wondering how can virtual care make health care more affordable for both consumers, users of virtual care and also even the health system at large?
Karen Silgen
Yeah, virtual care and technology in general does help play a role in making health care more affordable. From a clinical perspective, being able to access virtual and in person care is easier has many benefits. Virtual care can help detect disease before it starts by getting people to a care provider and helping improve access. It helps people manage health conditions more effectively to avoid complications, or even ER visits that cost a whole health care system. And it helps people get to a low- cost high-quality provider that best suits their needs. So, with all of these various things together, improving access, being able to connect with a high-quality provider is going to help the cost of the health care system in the long run.
Ira Apfel
I'm curious, will virtual care replace traditional health care offerings? Or are there some distant things that won't go away?
Karen Silgen
Well, virtual care and in person care definitely complement one another. A virtual care visits obviously can't do everything, and the consumer ultimately needs in person care. things right for in person care are types of procedures that require and hands on intervention, lab testing, you know, even surgeries. There are estimates that 50 to 80% of health care can be handled virtually, with that higher end of the range supported by remote patient monitoring devices like a blood pressure cuff, or glucose monitoring, or even digital diagnostic devices like a thermometer and order scope that you can look at one's ears. So as more technology and connectivity and the health care system pulls all the different peripheral devices and things together, there's going to be more opportunity to have virtual care to be a key component of health care overall.
Ira Apfel
I wanted to get to talking now about UHG’s NavigateNOW program which you just debuted, and I think it’s going to kind of kick off really in full in 2022. Tell me about NavigateNOW what is it?
Karen Silgen
NavigateNOW is our virtual first product offering. And when I say virtual first, that means that consumers are UnitedHealthcare members will use virtual care as the first option for primary care services. And we set out with NavigateNOW with one goal, which was to create an accessible, simple and seamless model that works designed around people. So, our NavigateNOW our virtual first health plan offers our members 24/7 access to care, and has $0 cost sharing, so no responsibility for the member for virtual and in person primary care and behavioral health visits and virtual urgent care. When we created this model, it was so extremely simple, where members can click a button and be able to connect with their personalized care team, which includes primary care provider, nurse and other professionals like a behavioral health therapist. And so when you think about that super simple consumer experience, coupled with the ability to reach your care team 24/7, and then on the back end, creating that infrastructure that allows data and my health information and being able to exchange health records within select providers makes it pretty powerful for the member to be able to be empowered and help navigate the health care system.
Ira Apfel
How does NavigateNOW work for physicians who are part of it?
Karen Silgen
NavigateNOW allows a transformation of how care is being delivered and more seamlessly from both in person and virtual. For physicians specifically, now they have that personalized care team, and that they can deliver and practice medicine not only virtually, but in person as well. And that ecosystem that we're creating with electronic medical records,and being able to connect with patients and new way is pretty powerful. One of the other things that UnitedHealthcare, our commercial business did earlier this year, outside of NavigateNOW was to support providers across our entire network. And so we updated our payment policy that allowed providers to connect with their own patients, and so not only are we building products like NavigateNOW that allow members to connect with their virtual care team. We're also enabling our entire UnitedHealthcare provider network so that people can see their own doctor for select telehealth services, and that's something that It's pretty powerful across the UnitedHealthcare.
Ira Apfel
You mentioned, you started talking a little bit about UnitedHealthcare, which of course, is part of UnitedHealth Group. And another part of the UnitedHealth Group is Optum. And so, I'm wondering, what did UnitedHealthcare and Optum do? How did they collaborate when they, when they were creating NavigateNOW?
Karen Silgen
NavigateNOW is a strong partnership between UnitedHealthcare, our payer side, and Optum, who is our care provider. Optum virtual care is our virtual medical group that is basically the provider group that our members first connect with when they need all of their virtual care, and is the one that is part of their personalized care team. So, when you think about Optum, and UnitedHealthcare, since we're all part of UnitedHealth Group, we're able to create that high level of data integration and connectivity so that that seamless information between the member at the health plan, and the provider, is able to see all that information and be able to support that that member in new ways. The other thing that Optum has is a multitude of in person, or bricks and mortar locations across the country. And so, as I spoke about earlier, not everything can be done virtual, so Optum is taking their virtual medical clinic and creating those strong handoffs, we call them the last mile care. So, for a member at some point, you're going to need that in person, lab, blood work, whatever it may be, that that hands on physician touch, and Optum’s able to work with a lot of their locations across the country. Devices that monitor heart rates, measured blood sugar for diabetes, all of those are envisioned to be incorporated into this experience so that virtual primary care provider will have all the latest information and that member doesn't even have to leave their home.
Ira Apfel
What are the coming challenges ahead for NavigateNOW as it looks to launch? And what are some possible hurdles that you're trying to surmount, particularly when it comes to consumers and employers?
Karen Silgen
Sure, so building something new that hasn't been built before, has, you know, the ability to really transform health care, and one of the great things about that is that it is first to market, but it does create some opportunities to think differently of how people consume health care. When we initially built NavigateNOW, we were thinking that this particular product would really resonate with the millennials and digital savvy individuals, but we're finding that there's broad application, and then a lot of consumers are interested in this type of product, because that they have that 24/7 ability to connect with a provider. They don't necessarily have to leave their home. There could be transportation challenges, whatever it may be. So, being able to get this particular product in front of consumers and you know, change that mindset, where I don't have to go to urgent care or the ER to be seen immediately, that I have this virtual care option is something that is going to take a little bit of time. But as we've seen through the pandemic, more and more people are using virtual care so we’re very optimistic on that. Employers who we've spoken with for this particular product are very interested in NavigateNOW too for a couple of different reasons. Number one, they anticipate that this could help lower their overall health care costs because their employees aren't using the ER Urgent Care for common everyday types of things.
Ira Apfel
Karen Silgen, thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
Karen Silgen
Great. Thank you for having me.
Ira Apfel
That's it for this episode of UnitedHealth Group’s Weekly Dose podcast. Please subscribe to the Weekly Dose podcast on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Thanks for listening and have a great rest of your week.