What Does the Future of Virtual Care Hold for Businesses with Kate Brown

Kate Brown is head of Mercer's Center for Health Innovation and is an expert in managing and improving employee population health through corporate wellness initiatives. Brown also holds a master's degree in kinesiology and a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) designation.  

In this episode, Brown discusses the latest trends and disruptive innovations in the employer-sponsored healthcare space. These include the pros and cons of the rapid adoption of digital healthcare solutions, what healthcare will look like in 2030, the threat posed to current virtual care providers by big tech, and the enormous potential of remote patient monitoring (RPM) technology to revolutionize the future of healthcare.  

Brown identifies the current state of 'fragmented virtual care' as one of the most pressing concerns in the virtual healthcare space. This phenomenon occurs when an employee receives treatment for several different conditions from separate care providers. Since these conditions are essentially being treated in isolation, employees are at risk of poor outcomes, while duplicate billing can affect employers. The underlying issue is that patient data is siloed, and subsequently, holistic, cost-effective treatment is hindered. Listen to Brown's intuition on solving this problem and others through her fresh mindset.

"Employers, in particular, have learned that mental health is something that everyone has and that everyone needs to manage."

"The pandemic definitely does suck. I think the thing that is the biggest silver-lining from where I'm sitting is that a lot of people have realized that you can do things differently and the world won't implode."

"There was a lot of older infrastructure that was in place prior to coronavirus that was quickly flipped and used to deliver virtual care, and in some cases, that's great. In other cases, it really needs to be reexamined and not built from scratch, but maybe built from close to scratch in order to get it right and deliver a good virtual experience."  

On fragmented virtual healthcare:

"Today, all the data exists in silos, and so if the data is not shared appropriately and if there's not someone looking holistically at the patient, I think all of the risks [poor outcomes and inefficient care] that you mentioned, Jonathan, are possible."  

"Using remote patient monitoring technology enables people to receive a lot more care at home than they did previously."