Name: 'Virtual Care Is the Great Equalizer in Healthcare', Says Teladoc Health CEO
Uploaded: 2019-09-11
Duration: 5 min 20 s
Description: Teladoc Health CEO Jason Gorevic explains how patients can access low-cost medical care without having to visit a doctor's office.

[ MUSIC ] Jason, you're a big believer in making sure that everybody has access to healthcare, and especially if it's affordable and convenient. Tell us a little bit about the mission of your company, Teledoc? Well we think virtual care is the great equalizer in healthcare. And it's our mission to transform how people get care to make it more convenient, higher quality and lower cost. And we've been doing that now. I've been at the company for ten years. We'll do almost 4 million virtual care visits this year all around the world to do exactly that. Other great thing about telemedicine is that you're providing healthcare for people who live in areas where they might not have access to a doctor or a really good doctor's but what about on the cost side? I mean to what extent. And is tell the doc helping to bring down health care costs in the process. Well by eliminating the physical barriers to getting care. It also brings down the cost of just the infrastructure necessary to deliver that care. Technology facilitates the access and we're able to use little slices of doctor's time that otherwise would go unused. And by doing that we can bring down the cost of care, getting the right care to the consumer at the time when they need it, in a really efficient manner. So it's really, I've been in healthcare almost my whole career, it's the first time I've had the opportunity to work on something that's a win for doctors When for the payers of healthcare and a win for the patients, we've seen so many business leaders who believe that they can and should do a better job in addressing the needs of society of dealing with some of the issues, social social issues, what's your take on that kind of leadership? I think it's essential today. I think people want to be inspired, both in the work force and by the companies who they work with. You know, I went into healthcare to begin with because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to do something where I thought I could make an impact on society, on people's lives. There was clearly a huge need. There still is a huge need. You know, our team of people really embraces that. I think it's leaders responsibility to lead, to really act in a way that is inspiring to people, socially responsible And goes beyond just delivering bottom line results. And so I guess it was along the same line that you are talking about to be so social responsible, that you announce the creation of the first ever patience safety organization and this is for virtual care and delivery. It's never been I've done before. What was your goal. Why did you do this. Well qualities really foundational for us. And the opportunity to establish a patient safety organization that collects data about virtual care and collaborate with the rest of the health care system to be able to measure quality and really define quality for virtual care. Was very attractive to us. One of the big barriers to virtual care adoption is a question about is this gonna be high quality care that really resolves my needs? And we know that's true. This is a way for us to help demonstrate that. You're an entrepreneur. So you're thinking directly of Solving problems and solving society's problems, but a lot of bigger companies, fortune 500 companies have so many other issues to deal with and they're not as focused on this stuff and they get feedback from their employees to take on some of these issues. To what extent do you have employees in your organization that wants you to weigh in Are some of these social problems ?>> Absolutely. There's no question our employees. Think of us as if we were a fortune 500 company in terms of the impact that we can have. So we may not have, you know, thousands and thousands of employees all around the world only 2200 at this point. But the impact that we can have with our clients, our social responsiblity's just as big as anyone else. In Paradise, California where the fires were, we work with Blue Shield of California, and one of our team members collaborated with them to come up with an idea because the Paradise Medical Group had gone up in flames. And so those physicians were unable to work, the community was unable to get care and a member of my team worked with our friends at Blue Shield of California to stand up our virtual care practice for that medical group so that they could get back to work and start taking care of the community there. So, you're here at the Fortune CEO Initiative conference where there are a lot of CEOs talking about this. Very same issues, what did you get out of it? Was there any one thing that really stood out for you and may be influenced your thinking. I think there is no secret that technology is in the hot seat right now. The use of data, access to data and the trust of the consumer are very closely related And it's good to be among a group of CEO's, we were tackling that initiative and sort of recognizing that that's a problem for us. I think transparency is critical, right. And what I heard today was a push for transparency about what we're doing with data, what the technology community is doing, how we're using it and how it can be for the good of the consumer And not a scary thing. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

'Virtual Care Is the Great Equalizer in Healthcare', Says Teladoc Health CEO

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Teladoc Health CEO Jason Gorevic explains how patients can access low-cost medical care without having to visit a doctor's office.