This year has been unlike any other. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus forced the healthcare industry into fast innovation and agility that hadn’t ever been seen before—but was desperately needed. This disruption compelled us, and our partners, to rise to the occasion. We watched our partners offer free screenings and virtual care visits to their communities; stand up new modes of virtual care; enlist and train new providers each day to meet increasing demand.
With a memorable 2020 in the rearview mirror, it’s impossible not to look back at the work we’ve accomplished. Here is some impressive data from the most unprecedented year.
In 2020, we screened and treated more than two million patients on the Fabric platform. TWO MILLION. That is more than a 780 percent increase in comparison to 2019.
The champion of virtual care
In 2020, asynchronous care reigned supreme as the preferred mode of care for patients. Of all virtual visits completed, 79 percent were complete via intelligent interviews.
Prioritizing patient & provider time
Other telemedicine providers struggled to keep up with the high influx of patients early on in the pandemic. Early on in the pandemic the average wait time for other telemedicine providers was up 22 hours. The Fabric wait time? 10 minutes. Since then, we’ve maintained an unparalleled patient experience with a median patient wait time of just under 8 minutes.
In turn, our median provider work time for 2020 is just under 2 minutes—proving that despite a more than 700 percent increase in virtual visits, providers are still able to keep up and treat more patients than ever before.
Who's using virtual care?
Historically, telehealth utilization has skewed toward women. However, we saw an interesting, optimistic trend come out of COVID-19—an increased utilization of virtual care by men.
In 2019, 45 percent of visits completed on the Fabric platform were done so by men. In 2020, we saw utilization jump to 51 percent. While this isn’t a huge margin, it is an upward trend—proving men are continuing to try virtual care more and more, year over year.
Looking ahead
When reflecting on the year, I think back to March, when one provider in Seattle diagnosed 1,792 patients via the Fabric platform in just 7 days. That’s 12 patients an hour, for 12 hours a day. The success virtual care has seen in the last year is remarkable, but I know the sacrifices made by all the healthcare workers and providers is what made the exceptional possible.
There’s a new normal emerging in healthcare, and as we manage the learning curves and growing pains, we must continue to advance and expand alongside the changes. The make-shift solutions put in place in the early days of COVID-19 won’t last and traditional healthcare is a way of the past. Fabric is here to help you build a better way.
What does your virtual care strategy look like beyond 2020 and COVID-19?
It’s not too early to start thinking about what lies ahead. The future is now, and Fabric is powering the virtual-first ecosystem.
