New research suggests that virtual-first care can improve the results of chronic care programs.
The data underlying the research comes from Omada Health, which offers virtual-first care programs for a number of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, hypertension, musculoskeletal conditions and behavioral health issues.
To look at the effectiveness of these programs, Omada pulled together more than 1 billion actionable data points from 100 million devices across all programs. It also collected 13 million care messages spanning these programs.
The Omada Insights Lab found that virtual-first care generated some significant successes. For example, it concluded that 94% of members engaged with a COVID health coach in the first week were more likely to achieve the health outcomes caregivers had in mind.
Also, when coaches offered proactive feedback, patients showed a 10% to 15% increase in meal tracking retention. This correlated with a 0.5% increase in weight loss for the first four months, compared to the control group that got reactive coaching.
Meanwhile, patients enrolled in Omada’s diabetes program saw average drops in hemoglobin A1c from 0.8% to 1.4%, plus a 15-point decrease in total cholesterol and an 11% increase in medication adherence.
Meanwhile, the musculoskeletal program members saw a 51% average pain reduction in 71% average functional improvement. Also, 98% showed improvement in their area of concern with a 21% overall reduction in medical spending per member.
These are intriguing numbers. As much a fan as I am of telehealth, it may offer little or no additional benefit over a traditional office visit (other than avoiding the trip to the office). Of course, if a provider decides to invest in full-on remote monitoring it’s a different story, but I doubt that most providers have felt up to making that kind of investment, as even the simplest remote monitoring set-up isn’t cheap.
What will really be interesting is to see whether Omada can sustain its success over a longer period when it stops being the next new thing.
The truth is that historically, chronic care management programs have at best mixed success. This includes programs centered primarily on frequent phone calls, which would theoretically offer some of the same benefits as video visits.
The truth is that while we seem to be making some important strides forward using virtual-first care, we don’t yet have a formula for such projects which can be adopted universally. These statistics provide interesting food for thought but it’s they’re far from definitive. I suspect it will be some time before we understand fully what makes these types of programs work.
