In October 2022, Chalretson, S.C.-based MUSC Health and Cleveland-based MetroHealth system forged a partnership to develop a virtual-first healthcare company expanding access to care.
The company, Ovatient, is built on Epic and includes virtual primary care and urgent care services. Soon, patients will be able to access mental health services through Ovatient as well.
“The goal behind this platform is to create a single solution that integrates into several different partner settings where patients can get integrated primary and urgent care,” said Yasir Tarabichi, MD, CMIO of Ovatient and chief health AI officer of MetroHealth, during an episode of the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “What that means specifically is we can take care of connecting patients to the on-the-ground, brick-and-mortar solutions at the partner organization and their home organization in a way that other point solutions that exist today do not.”
The two health systems’ executive teams have collaborated for years on a variety of projects, and when the need for additional virtual care solutions arose, the two organizations were primed to solve the problem together.
“MetroHealth is known for being very innovative in the digital and informatics space, and I’d say we’re scrappy innovators. We generally punch above our weight for the organization that we’re at, the size of our organization and the fact that we’re a safety net system that’s typically more resource-strapped than the average healthcare system,” said Dr. Tarabichi. “MUSC has a really similar patient population as us. They are also relatively well known in the virtual care space. They have a very strong asynchronous care program, which is nationally recognized, and so the leadership on that side felt the leadership on this side could work together to achieve a shared common goal, a shared platform between the organizations.”
When the leadership teams for both health systems came together to solve their virtual care challenges, they began comparing problems they’re trying to solve and align on the biggest issues in need of a solution.
“We’re pouring in resources together, co-solutioning, collaborating and we’re creating a platform and a system that we can take to other partners,” said Dr. Tarabichi. “That’s our opportunity to scale this out to a higher level across different states and different organizations.”
The platform leverages Epic’s tools and both systems have internal developers to integrate patient experience into the platform design. This past year, MetroHealth launched Ovatient’s virtual care services for Ohio-based patients and hired on more than 10 providers.
“We’ve seen thousands of patients and we’ve had just fantastic results, rave reviews, a lot of emphasis on the ease of access, a lot of good positive feedback on the integration,” said Dr. Tarabichi. “For example, if you have a fever, you call into our services. We figure out that you really ought to get swabbed for COVID and flu, and we can go from a virtual visit to a swab in a brick and mortar facility that’s a MetroHealth facility to the prescription and even home delivery of Paxlovid if you have COVID, within several hours, which is just amazing compared to the usual experience of going into an Express Care or emergency room and waiting much longer. It’s been really rewarding to see that integration play out.”
Ovatient aims to go live in South Carolina with the same level of services “shortly,” according to Dr. Tarabichi. He sees big growth potential for Ovatient and the health systems’ partnership. He said they’ve been in talks with other health systems about possibly launching the service in other states as well.
But the regulatory environment could become challenging if the telehealth billing extension isn’t made permanent.
“The telehealth extension, while reassuring and definitely a positive move, only gives us so much runway to continue to build our platform and solution in a comfortable way,” said Dr. Tarabichi. “Most of us now have reached the conclusion that virtual care is here to stay. It’s a necessary component.”
