How Specialty Telemedicine Programs Can Address the Rising Tide of Physician Retirements
With planned physician retirements inching back up after declining in recent years, hospitals increasingly are turning to specialty telemedicine programs to avoid disruptions in patient care, particularly for specialty service lines with significant physician shortages, like nephrology and psychiatry.
Nearly 30 percent of physicians report planning to retire in the next year, the second highest proportion reporting such intentions since 2012.
When hospitals have just one or two physicians for a specialty service line, their departure can sometimes mean the end of patients’ local access to care for that particular specialty. Having an acute telemedicine partner can make those transitions less daunting and ensure continuity of care.
Acute Telemedicine Partnership Example 1:
When two hospitals in the same health system faced the imminent retirement of their sole nephrologist in 2023, the future of their entire nephrology program was put in jeopardy. The hospitals turned to Access TeleCare to maintain capacity for their inpatient units and local dialysis centers, and to protect the future of nephrology care for their patients.
A dedicated pod of teleNephrologists fully integrated with on-site physicians and staff at both hospitals and the nearby dialysis centers. Access TeleCare helped the hospitals smoothly transition the on-site nephrologist into retirement while avoiding gaps in coverage. This deep level of integration allowed for seamless coordination between the hospitals, the outlying dialysis centers, and the teleNephrologists. With a virtual care delivery model now in place, the hospitals have ensured the long-term viability of their nephrology program and established a new standard of care for their community.
Key Telemedicine Partnership Results
Acute Telemedicine Partnership Example 2:
When a rural behavioral health hospital’s medical director and sole psychiatrist announced their retirement, the hospital feared it would have to shut its doors because of the near impossibility of recruiting a new qualified psychiatric medical director to the rural community.
The hospital instead partnered with Access TeleCare to launch a fully virtual behavioral healthcare telemedicine program, staffed not only with a psychiatric medical director but a full team of psychiatrists and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners.
In less than three months, the program was fully operational, with no service interruption after the on-site psychiatrist’s departure.
