DeWITT — Excellus BlueCross BlueShield on Nov. 29 announced it will offer a telemedicine option to all privately insured and Medicare Advantage members in 2017.

Excellus will use MDLIVE as its telemedicine platform beginning Jan. 1, 2017, the health insurer said in a news release. Rochester–based Excellus is Central New York’s largest health insurer.

MDLIVE is a Sunrise, Florida–based “telehealth provider of online and on-demand health-care delivery services,” according to its website.

Telemedicine, or remote medical care, involves the patient and the provider when they’re in separate locations but linked by telephone or a secure two-way video connection.

Excellus said it acknowledges and “wants to emphasize” that a patient’s primary-care physician provides the “best care” because the doctor “knows you best.”

“But in our rapidly changing world … face to face visits aren’t always possible for families and patients. So, telemedicine is an alternative that is gaining rapid popularity across the country, and we anticipate that, in upstate New York, that we’re going to see increasing utilization of telemedicine,” Dr. Richard Lockwood, VP and chief medical officer of Excellus’s Central New York region, said in remarks at a news conference at Excellus’s office on Nov. 29.

Telemedicine services are available to anyone with or without health insurance, Excellus said in its release, but also noted carriers are building “easy-to-use” platforms into most health-insurance offerings throughout upstate New York.

Excellus predicts Upstate New Yorkers will “embrace” telemedicine as an alternative to getting care for minor conditions next year and expects Upstate residents to use that option “more than 50,000 times by the year 2018.”

“And by doing that, we can save our members dollars and help keep premium costs down and offer this as an alternative, so they can actually can get health care they need when they need it,” Lockwood said.

Relying on national studies, local projections and preliminary results from a pilot program of its own employees’ use of telemedicine, the health insurer contends a surge in the use of telemedicine is likely to begin in 2017 and “grow rapidly every year through the remainder of this decade and beyond.”

“Historical” advances in clinical decision-making; the evolution of customer-friendly technology applications for smartphones, tablets and computers; and more people having high-deductible health policies are the “most frequently” cited reasons driving the trend.

Excellus also used its announcement to say that it will invest in a public-education campaign that presents telemedicine as an “alternative to potentially preventable” emergency-room visits.

MDLIVE pilot
In the Excellus release, Lockwood cited an adage that you should be skeptical of chefs who don’t taste their own cooking.

“With that in mind, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield ran a pilot program that encouraged our employees to register themselves and family members with MDLIVE. The responses we received for getting this benefit and using it were overwhelmingly positive,” said Lockwood.

Among registered employee users, about 8 percent made use of the telemedicine option.

More than half said they would have gone to an urgent-care center or the emergency room for a minor condition if the telemedicine option hadn’t been available.

Relying on data from the New York State Department of Health labeled “potentially preventable” emergency room visits, Excellus reported earlier this year that 10 common conditions represent more than 2 million annual visits to hospital emergency rooms statewide, and nine out of 10 of those could have been avoided or treated elsewhere.

Of 6.4 million emergency-room visits in 2013, more than 2 million were for common conditions, such as ear or sinus infections and sore throats.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com