'The world will never be the same': Healthcare executives say telehealth is here to stay beyond the coronavirus

• Telehealth is having a moment in the sun amid the coronavirus, which has forced an end to many nonurgent visits to hospitals and clinics.
• Physicians are connecting with patients virtually as telehealth transitions from a "gratifying new technology" to something that's developed "a life of its own," according to Dr. Roy Schoenberg, the CEO of the telemedicine company American Well.
• Business Insider's Lydia Ramsey talked with Schoenberg and Dr. David Houghton, the system chair of telemedicine and digital health for Ochsner Health in Louisiana, during a webinar on Thursday.
• Both Schoenberg and Houghton say telehealth is here to stay. They said the pandemic has fundamentally changed how the healthcare system thinks about how to best provide care.
• Read live updates about the coronavirus here.

The coronavirus has uprooted virtually every industry in the US, forcing businesses to shut down, schools to move online, and hospitals to cancel nonurgent surgeries.

Doctors, instead of seeing patients in person at clinics or in hospitals, have turned to technology to provide care. Telemedicine, which allows healthcare professionals to connect with patients through phones and computers, has become more common as clinics have shut down and hospitals have become inundated with COVID-19 patients in recent months.

Physicians have turned to technology to virtually connect with patients as telehealth transitions from a "gratifying new technology" to something that's developed "a life of its own," Dr. Roy Schoenberg, the CEO of the telemedicine company American Well, told Business Insider's Lydia Ramsey during a webinar on Thursday afternoon.

"Here we are six weeks into the arrival of the pandemic in a big way, really rethinking how healthcare is going to be built and offered to Americans and essentially to people around the world," Schoenberg said.

'Life will never be the same'

Schoenberg said he watched a grassroots movement of clinicians in the US transition the way they do healthcare to telehealth as the coronavirus pandemic began to unfold, as opposed to health systems moving as a whole toward telemedicine.

"To me, life will never be the same," he said.

Also pushing telemedicine forward in recent weeks has been regulatory changes that have made this approach to healthcare more accessible to doctors and patients alike.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently expanded telehealth services to Medicare members, and states like New York, which has been hit particularly hard by the virus, have let clinicians outside the state treat patients within its borders via telemedicine. Doctors usually need to be licensed in the states where they want to deliver virtual care.

Telemedicine companies like Amwell and health systems that use telemedicine have been seeing a big uptick in the number of physicians and patients connecting virtually.

Dr. David Houghton, the system chair of telemedicine and digital health for Ochsner Health in Louisiana, said Ochsner has been using telemedicine as a way to deliver care for years, but there were just a couple hundred doctors using it before the crisis.

There are now more than 3,000 physicians making more than 3,500 virtual visits per day, he said.

Why telemedicine will persist after the pandemic

The chronic ailments that many patients have to deal with don't disappear during a pandemic, Houghton told Ramsey on Thursday.

"The diabetes didn't go away; the high blood pressure didn't go away," he said.

He said he expected the increase in telemedicine use to continue after the pandemic is over.

"If this is the hype cycle, we don't see it going into any sort of trough," he said. "We were ready for this, and we're looking forward to being able to utilize these technologies really for the long term."

Because so many regulations regarding telehealth have been relaxed over the past couple of weeks, Schoenberg expects some to bounce back and be reinforced again once the pandemic calms.

"I'm pretty sure that medical boards are going to try to reassert jurisdiction over the care that's being rendered in their states," he said.

Schoenberg added that he was hopeful Medicare would remain as open to telehealth as it is now.

"But it's a little like the Garden of Eden," Schoenberg said. "Once you've taken a bite of that apple, and you have seen the value that this brings to patients, and physicians feel how helpful they were to patients in that way, at some point it's got to resonate with us."

Schoenberg said society has seen what telehealth can do.

He said that was "more powerful than any legislator" or administration and "has a life of its own."

"I think it's going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle for a lot of the reimbursement things," Houghton added. "If this was so important during this time, there will be another next time."

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