The Accenture study examined how virtual tools — such as biometric devices, analytic diagnostic engines and virtual medical assistants — allowed healthcare providers to gather patient information, complete intake surveys and consider clinical options, ultimately streamlining the in-person portion of the exam and saving the primary care physicians five minutes per encounter.
According to the study authors, the five minutes saved during each encounter is roughly equivalent to the work of 37,000 primary care physicians per year (approximately 18 percent of the existing workforce) and an annual economic value of more than $7 billion.
Accenture applied the virtual health solutions to diabetes care as well and found the time saved was roughly equivalent to the work of 24,000 primary care physicians per year (11 percent of the existing workforce), or $2 billion.
The study also examined the effect of applying electronic clinical exchanges to hypertension management. Accenture discovered that, if each patient had one in-person exam and half of the remaining hypertension-focused visits switched to an electronic medium, the time savings could equal roughly 1,500 primary care physicians per year, or $300 million in annual value.
“There’s a lot of capacity sitting in U.S. health systems that can be freed by applying digital-enabled productivity strategies,” said Kaveh Safavi MD, global managing director of Accenture Health. “This type of virtual health can boost the supply of primary care doctors — without adding or training professionals — at a time when there’s a projected shortage of 31,000 professionals expected in the next decade.”
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