A variety of healthcare institutions offer remote second opinion to make it more convenient and less expensive for people to get another expert take from a distance.
Partners Healthcare made an announcement Tuesday formalizing a relationship with a third party that aims to help Chinese physicians and patients access U.S. physicians, specifically, Parters experts.
The integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital is partnering with Massachusetts Medical International to help in remote diagnosis and expert opinion through its Partners Online Second Opinion service for both physicians and patients.
The benefits of the move to both sides is obvious —a whole new patient stream for Partners Healthcare and for Chinese residents, quick, easy access to U.S. medical knowledge by leveraging technology without having to take a transcontinental flight.
In an interview at the 2017 HIMSS annual meeting in Orlando, Joe Kvedar, Vice President, Connected Health at Partners, said the partnership with Mass Medical International has been going on for a few months and interest in remote expert opinion has been growing.
“I don’t have any hard data but just experientially we hear a lot about, particularly Chinese entities and medical centers reaching into U.S to get access to expert opinion,” Kvedar said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Partners Online Second Opinion service was launched about 20 years ago and now more than 13,000 patients globally have used it. Kvedar said that Partners was “really the first academic center” to take the POSO service online.
“Indeed half of our volume is international,” he said. “The best markets [for POSO] are those that have a fair degree of economic development but some either lack of trust or the system hasn’t caught up.”
Kvedar explained that there is no financial relationship between Mass International and his organization, but Mass International provides a markup with some value-added services to what the POSO charges to connect Chinese physicians and patients to Partners experts. Currently, for a specialist opinion POSO charges $575 per specialist consultation and $300 for each radiology study among other consultations.
While Partners experts are available to provide help in all disease areas, most of the interest in second and expert opinions has been in cancer.
“People with diseases that are either rare or have exhausted local care options and want to make sure that they aren’t missing something,” are the ones that typically reach out, Kvedar said.
Interestingly, a review of POSO consultations overall — whether in the U.S. or abroad — found that in 90 percent of cases reviewed Partners experts recommended a complete change in the treatment plan that patients were on. When it came to a diagnosis, however, local care seems adequate. A new diagnosis was needed only in 5 percent of cases.
Why the disconnect?
“It’s a good question and I think what that says that about healthcare around the world is that we pretty much train physicians consistently now.” he said. “After that, it’s about experience. We are lucky in Boston and our teaching hospitals to have 5,000 specialists … and some of them do one thing all day long for 20 years and so they know all the nuances.”
