How Telehealth Is Shaping the Future of Accessible Primary Care: Insights from Riley Levy

Telehealth is arguably one of the most significant developments in the delivery and access of medical care in recent years. The term refers to a set of digital communication technologies aimed at bridging the divide between patients and healthcare providers, allowing promising new opportunities for medical care.

Telehealth offers many benefits to patients as well as healthcare providers, namely, accessibility and convenience. However, it also has many other benefits with regard to how medical care is obtained, administered, and experienced.

As the founder and CEO of The Complete Human Co. (TCHC), Riley Levy is well aware of these benefits. He launched the Phoenix, Arizona-based firm in 2023 after spending most of the previous year laying the groundwork for the administration of primary care services via a combination of telehealth and care coordination processes.

For Riley and a growing number of patients and healthcare providers, telehealth is fast shaping up to be a game changer in the future of accessible primary care. Many believe that it could even be the primary mode of delivering care services, even in communities that have traditionally had easy access to healthcare.

Technology's Role in Telehealth

Telehealth encompasses various types of digital communication technologies used to deliver remote healthcare services. These include video conferencing platforms, phone calls, messaging apps, and other data-sharing platforms.

These methods and tools facilitate virtual medical consultations and health-related interactions between patients and care providers. They enable patients to consult and interact with doctors and other health professionals. These professionals, in turn, can diagnose, treat, and manage medical conditions without being in the same room as their patients.

Of course, telehealth wouldn't have been possible without the crucial advances in the technology that drives it. Many of the tools and methods now commonly used in delivering telehealth services weren't even widely available until a few decades ago. As technology advances even further, telehealth will almost certainly have an even bigger role in the healthcare sector in the future.

Why Telehealth Is Crucial for Future Healthcare

One of the key benefits of telehealth is its ability to bridge geographical and logistical barriers between patients and care providers. It essentially allows patients to access care services and professional medical expertise regardless of their location.

This is an important distinction that could have vital implications for the future, considering the growing challenges many patients face concerning healthcare access.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a crucial turning point for telehealth, considering the immense challenges that many faced in getting the healthcare services they needed. Its benefits became especially apparent given the restrictions placed on travel and in-person hospital visits.

However, even after COVID restrictions were lifted, the benefits of telehealth remained obvious. Apart from enhancing healthcare accessibility, it also reduced costs significantly and even improved patient outcomes. In many cases, telehealth proved to be a practical solution, not only when in-person visits were impossible but also when they were time-consuming or weren't urgent.

Riley Levy: Telehealth Advocate

Riley Levy continues to be one of the most active proponents of telehealth. He has always been focused on patient outcomes and provider experience throughout his career, so establishing The Complete Human Co. was a logical step toward improving healthcare and reducing its cost.

For Riley, telehealth is a feasible way to reduce hospital readmissions and lower healthcare costs for payers and patients. By remotely providing convenient and efficient medical care, it's ideally suited for discharged patients who don't have primary care physicians or have no need for another. Given these benefits, telehealth could be one of the most important models for accessing and delivering primary care in the future.