Healthcare Dive Mentions Confluent Health in Announcement of Microsoft Teams Integration
Microsoft Teams integrates with EHRs for provider telehealth
Dive Brief:
- Microsoft’s video platform, Teams, is integrating directly with health records software to let clinicians launch virtual visits straight from their EHR, the software giant announced Tuesday.
- Epic’s EHR will be the first to integrate with Teams, and the platform will be available in the Epic App Orchard later this year. Support for other EHR systems is “coming soon,”, Microsoft said.
- Microsoft has been elbowing further into healthcare during the pandemic. Its first industry-specific cloud offering, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, will be generally available at the end of the October.
Dive Insight:
Patients turned to virtual care in droves this year amid the pandemic and friendly Trump administration policies, though telehealth utilization has moderated somewhat from April and May highs. Still, analysts predict COVID-19 will lead to a long-term shakeup of the healthcare delivery system, with digital pathways to care accounting for a larger share of medical visits and spend.
Telehealth isn’t just about patients looking to check urgent care needs in the comfort of their home. Hospitals are getting in on the action too, investing in capabilities like digital post-surgical followups, teleICU and telestroke. About 76% of hospitals used telehealth in some way before the pandemic, but that number has likely snowballed in 2020, experts say.
Just a few years ago, hospitals contracting with most telehealth vendors would have to download yet another EHR. Toggling between the two can steal valuable effort from doctors and could contribute to record duplication. Large telehealth vendors like MDLive, Amwell and Teladoc have worked to integrate with their portals with the biggest EHR providers, like Epic and Cerner, to streamline the visit process.
Teams is now following suite.
See our mention and how this integration will affect our physical therapists here.
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