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When most think of second opinions, they picture patients traveling to a physician following a serious or complex medical diagnosis. This method does work for many patients, but what about those for whom it doesn't work? There is a growing interest in seeking out medical opinions online, and many have found ways to help patients without ever meeting them in person.

Patient preferences are shaping the way that hospitals and specialists deliver care, but why should you invest in creating a program to deliver second opinions virtually? Let's discuss the most common reasons our clients have decided to create a structured program to meet the demands of patients seeking opinions online.

An important question when exploring the benefits of remote second opinions, other than your patients’ demand, is the potential for increasing your revenue. You need to be sure it’s worth your investment before committing, and we get that. In this post we will walk you through the costs associated with offering remote second opinions and the potential revenue to help you decide whether it is an investment that you want to make.

Many hospitals that have relied solely on their brick and mortar facilities are now realizing that their physical location is only a part of the health care arsenal they can wield. While hospital facilities are valuable, rare and difficult to reproduce, they often limit their accessibility to those that are geographically local and sufficiently mobile to take advantage of an in-person visit. Beyond the physical structure, the most valuable asset that the hospital employs are its expert physicians. With the appropriate digital infrastructure, their expertise can be deployed well beyond the four walls of the facility.

In the post-COVID-19 world, most hospitals will be scrambling to reclaim the revenue they missed during the pandemic. Certainly, a good portion of normal operational revenue will revive as patients become more comfortable returning to the hospital for non-emergency conditions and delayed procedures. But making up for the losses arising during the pandemic will be a daunting task.

Hospitals and subspecialists are being called on, now more than ever, to provide their expertise to patients without an in -person face-to-face visit.  With the need for social distancing and stay at home orders, patients seeking second opinions are looking for the best medical expertise they can get without having to stray too far from home.

For patients in more rural areas or for more complex and critical cases, sometimes urban or even regional centers are where that expertise is more likely located. Traveling, sometimes long distances, to one of these facilities without first knowing whether they are ready and capable of treating that condition is often not advised. Instead, patients would prefer to communicate their case information in advance and only travel if the facility expects the visit to be advisable.

Hospitals seeking to expand their reach and perhaps even to increase revenue are heeding the call.  But to do so requires a solution that captures patients' clinical information, performs video consults and enables them to communicate with the patient, his or her referring physician and other health care experts both within ad outside of their own facility. Choosing which to use is a challenge.

Hospitals need to choose whether to acquire their own software to expose their unique expertise and brand to a larger audience or become a recipient for a third party network of specialists that refer cases to the hospital.  The decision usually comes down to whether the hospital wants to control its own process and outsource the administration of these cases or whether this service will be part of the hospitals core offering.

Below are some of the considerations for which approach to select.