Telehealth services and gene therapy gained unprecedented importance in 2020 as the world tried to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. With virtual healthcare becoming the new normal, payers seem set to revisit their plans in 2021 to include telehealth in their schemes.
With more and more people opting for telehealth services during the pandemic, the healthcare sector now has access to more data on what uses are best suited to telehealth.
- Along with behavioral and mental healthcare services, diagnostic and a few primary care services can also benefit from telehealth utilization. Besides, according to experts, the significance of virtual care in chronic disease management and specialty care is also increasing.
- The pandemic has also brought gene therapy back in focus with both the healthcare industry and the public hoping to find the Covid-19 cure through this. This certainly will make the payers devise a plan on how to go about gene therapy coverage in the new year.
- Payers are expected to come out with innovative, new payment models for expensive gene therapy treatments. According to CVS Health and Aetna, care coordination will hold the key to lower the costs around gene therapies. Besides, value-based care contracts can also be introduced, wherein pharmaceutical companies can be accountable for drug therapies that don’t meet certain quality metrics.
- Another ‘new’ in the new year could be real-time data collection in order to predict the future in healthcare. This assumes significance considering how 2020 showed that the future is unpredictable and that healthcare organizations can’t always brace for coming events based on their historical data. Also, collaboration with various healthcare sector stakeholders can help payers to understand trends and respond quickly.