Hybrid Patient Models Lead Charge Into Healthcare’s Digital Phase

The pandemic did not create the problems with access and expense in the United State healthcare system. What COVID-19 did change, however, is the urgency with which the market was addressing this problem.

With that in mind, San Francisco-based Carbon Health is working on a more accessible and more digitally enabled healthcare ecosystem. As stated by CEO and Co-Founder Eren Bali in a conversation with PYMNTS, the firm’s goal since it was founded in 2015 has been to use technology to provide high-quality care with a cost structure that is accessible to the entire patient population.

“When the COVID pandemic broke, it just made the existing disparities in U.S. care more obvious and high quality,” Bali said. “Scalable healthcare became far more important than it was before. We’ve seen 10 times growth in 2020, and growth is still accelerating now in new and dramatic ways.”

According to Bali, while patients will go back to some of their pre-pandemic ways, the healthcare system won’t because it can’t. The thing that has to happen now, he said, for is for healthcare to build out its digital infrastructure for its coming next digital phase.

Digital Health Beyond Telehealth

Telehealth isn’t new, but the explosion in its use among patients and providers was very much a side-effect of the pandemic. Providers who had shied away from it in the past, pushed by the necessity of the moment, realized that it was a viable and even superior option for their patients. That initial hurdle that kept so many away from the telehealth proposition was cleared. However, that massive explosion itself is not likely sustainable.

“We’re already seeing the trend getting relaxed,” Bali said. “So that number has gone down as it’s no longer at the same level it was at the peak of the pandemic. I think the fact that a lot of providers and patients tried for the first time and they realize when and how it can be very useful. So, these days it is a standard expected part of what every single healthcare provider is offering.”

Moreover, he said, digitizing healthcare is much bigger than telehealth alone. The reality is some care can be proffered virtually, but in many instances, healthcare is still a hands-on activity.

And yet, he said, the digitization of the process might mean the ability to fill out all documents in advance of a visit or testing meeting, so that patients won’t lose time stuck in a waiting room. It might mean the digitization of the prescription process to make sure patients can get all necessary medications delivered directly to their door. It might mean, as it most recently has for Carbon, the introduction of things like pop-up clinics in rural and otherwise underserved regions across the U.S. to provide mixed modal digital and physical services for patients in need.

“The providers in those pop-up clinics are available via video, but the nursing staff is available in person,” Bali said. “So, we can offer kind of get the best of both worlds. We can bring this to areas like rural areas, islands, which aren’t really getting access to traditional healthcare. We can extend the advantage of how accessible virtual care is. On the other hand, we also have the nursing staff available in person, so we can do things like collect lab samples, administer vaccines and even perform some simple procedures.”

The New Medical Paradigm

Building out this model, Bali said, is based on the idea that a patient who can’t get proper care represents a failure of the medical system. That failure can start to be addressed by integrating technology, which serves the dual purpose of expanding access for patients and by taking costs out of the system for providers.

It is why Carbon plans to expand aggressively. It started 2020 with seven practices and hopes to end 2021 with over 100. Ecosystems, he said, aren’t built in a day. But Carbon is bent on pushing out to scale as fast as it can, as it addresses a market that rather sorely needs services.

“Physical footprint is the essential infrastructure we are using to build a richer, more accessible array of technical services,” Bali said. “I mean, it’s similar to how Amazon had to build and buy a lot of warehouses to create Amazon as it exists today.”