On June 6, the Nashville Health Care Council hosted an event featuring Teladoc President and CEO Jason Gorevic as part of its ongoing programs to inspire collaboration, leadership and innovation. Approximately 200 Council members had the opportunity to hear and take part in a discussion between Gorevic and U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. Topics included the role telemedicine plays in the move toward population health, the growing prevalence of virtual medicine in today’s changing health care landscape and how Teladoc has become the dominant player in the American telemedicine and virtual care space.
View event photos on Flickr.
Photo credit: (c) 2017, Donn Jones.
An award-winning health care executive and innovator, Gorevic has helmed Teladoc since 2009.
“Our value proposition is simple,” Gorevic told Frist, who also serves on the Teladoc board of directors. “It’s about improving access to care and enabling patients to interact with health care systems remotely – just as everyone does everything today. We live in an on-demand society, and we believe health care access should be on-demand as well.”
Many see telemedicine as a cost-effective and valuable innovation to provide greater access to health care for millions, especially in rural areas where access is often a challenge.
Under Gorevic’s leadership, Teladoc has expanded and now operates in 49 states, with Arkansas’ entry coming later this year.
“Today, Teladoc serves more than 20 million members and will see almost 1.5 million individuals this year,” Gorevic said. “We conduct about 75 percent of all telehealth visits, yet we’re truly just scratching the surface. Behavioral health is our biggest area of clinical growth, because telebehavioral care addresses a lot of the barriers to traditional behavioral health care. Telemedicine allows board-certified psychiatrists to engage patients who may have low motivation, who are dealing with incredible stigma and who many not be willing to ask a friend for medical recommendations.”
Although the company still has plans for major growth, Gorevic says the secret to Teladoc’s success can be attributed largely to a combination of operational and marketing acumen.
“The three components of Teladoc’s success have been, first and foremost, ensuring high-quality care; having the technological and operational infrastructure to deliver that high-quality care on a large scale; and lastly, fundamentally changing consumers’ behaviors,” Gorevic said. “For us, the main challenge lies in shifting a patient from thinking ‘I’m sick and need to go to a doc,’ to ‘I’m sick and need Teladoc.’”
The discussion about the shifting health care landscape was fitting, as Council President Hayley Hovious opened the event by announcing a new purpose statement for the Council.
“Our new purpose statement – to inspire global collaboration to improve health care by serving as a catalyst for leadership and innovation – reflects the evolution of our organization’s growing scope and impact. Hosting discussions with groundbreakers like Jason is essential to moving health care forward,” Hovious said.
The presenting sponsor for today’s program was Lovell Communications. Supporting sponsors were PwC and UnitedHealth Group.