Demonstrated Results
Our physician users tell us that our highly flexible workflow engine, clinical structure, and integrated electronic prescribing, give RelayHealth a distinct advantage over e-mail, telephone calls, and even office visits for handling routine, non-urgent matters. And now independent research studies show they're right:
webVisit® Study
Download the webVisit Executive Summary PDFAn exhaustive independent study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, has evaluated the impact of RelayHealth and the clinically structured webVisit consultation on physician and patient satisfaction and healthcare costs. Participants included 282 physicians, 3,688 patients, and a matched control group.
The study demonstrated “consistent costs savings [and] strong statistical significance,” found lead researcher Laurence Baker Ph.D., Chief of Health Services Research, Stanford University School of Medicine.
And overall cost of care decreased. Dramatically. Compared to a matched control group, patients with access to RelayHealth saw statistically and economically significant reductions in total healthcare spending — including spending associated with office visits and with more costly forms of care, such as ER visits.
Study physicians received reimbursement for the care provided via RelayHealth. And by shifting non-urgent medical issues online, were able to make room for more acute office visits. With such tangible, quantified cost savings, more health plans will be inclined to reimburse for online care delivered via a RelayHealth webVisit.
More webVisit Study Highlights
- Physicians found RelayHealth satisfying, easy to use, and easy to integrate into their daily routine.
- Physician satisfaction ratings exceeded 90% among the highest volume users.
- Physicians preferred webVisits to office visits — more than half preferred the webVisit to an in-office visit for non-urgent medical issues.
- Reimbursement matters: Three in four physicians rated it as an important motivator to communicate online with patients.
- Patients loved using RelayHealth — more than three-quarters gave RelayHealth high marks, compared to telephone calls or office visits.
- Patient satisfaction ratings exceeded 90% when patients received responses by next business morning.
- Two-thirds of patients rated the quality of their webVisit highly when compared with an in-office visit, a percentage that rose to 87% when their physician responded by the next business morning.
Web Messaging Study (JAMIA, May/June 2003)
1As part of this research effort, physicians at a primary care clinic — along with their staff and patients — were surveyed on their use of the RelayHealth service. This study yielded impressive information on physician productivity: For the five-month study period, physicians completed more office visits and produced more Relative Value Units (RVU's), compared with the five-month control period the previous year. Because RelayHealth enables physicians to deal efficiently with non-urgent matters, more in-office time can be spent with patients with more acute needs. The result? The most valuable and scarce of resources — a physicians time — is optimized.
More Web Messaging Study Highlights
- Both providers and patients preferred RelayHealth over phone calls for non-urgent problems
- Physician visits increased from 24.79 visits/day to 28.54 visits/day (p<.05)
- Physician-delivered Relative Value Unit/day for the study period was 54.0 versus 47.4 for the control period (p<.01)
- Despite concerns, physicians were not inundated with messages
- Most clinicians found RelayHealth improved patient communication
- Researchers surmise that patients may be more comfortable using a web messaging service like RelayHealth than conventional SMTP e-mail — since security, medicolegal, and other barriers are minimized
- 75% of patients reported RelayHealth improved access to their providers
- A great majority of patients found RelayHealth easy to use
