Virtual care innovation and what’s next with MD Live by Evernorth.

Transcript

Lukas Voss: Hi everyone. This is Lukas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning into the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's fantastic to have you. Very exciting topic today, virtual care, innovation, adoption, and what's next with MD Live, which we'll talk about in a second. And joining me for today's discussion is Tony Colistra, President of MD Live by Evernorth. Tony, thanks so much for being here today. It's great to have you.

Tony Colistra: Hi, Lukas. Thanks so much for having me.

Lukas Voss: Yeah, it's great to have you. If you could introduce yourself to our audience and just share a little bit about your role, the organization, and your background in healthcare.

Tony Colistra: Yeah, I'd be happy to. So I have the pleasure of leading the team at MD Live. We're a virtual care company. We provide access of our services to more than 62 million members throughout our national network of board-certified physicians and licensed therapists. And they're all specially trained to deliver care virtually. So we partner with health plans, health systems, and employers, and we provide urgent care, behavioral health, primary care, and dermatology. And we do so across a variety of different modalities on our platform, whether it's telephonic, video, or chat functionality. And our members and our customers rely on us to solve some of the common barriers that they face in the industry today. So that's easily accessible healthcare, cost-effective, high-quality care, and a complement to their more traditional care delivery models.

Lukas Voss: Yeah. Tony, it's so great to have you because again, this is such an interesting topic, and it's certainly developed so much over the last couple of years. Again, if we think about the pandemic, right? Completely different to what it is today. And last year we were hearing a lot of talk on the consumer enthusiasm for virtual care waning a little bit with post-pandemic. Now it's sort of changing, right? More resurgence of interest, again with direct-to-consumer offerings being more prevalent for folks, weight loss, hair loss, sexual health, other conditions that impact overall health and lifestyles. There's a lot happening right now. Where does MD Live see consumers leaning into using virtual care as we head into 2026 here?

Tony Colistra: Yeah, Lukas, it's a really important question, and we discuss this with many of our clients every day. I think it's important to start with a few statistics. First of all, virtual care utilization is almost 30% higher than it was pre-pandemic.

Lukas Voss: Yes.

Tony Colistra: So while it's not as high as it was during the pandemic, when there were literally no other options, we still are significantly higher because of that acceleration and adoption during the pandemic. In fact, we just recently did a consumer research study that showed that 43% of all insured adults are open to receiving care virtually. But actually, I think the more important statistic that we learned from that study was that 30% prefer it to be over in-person care. So we know that there's demand out there, and you mentioned a couple of the reasons, whether it's this increased demand for the popularity of the weight loss medications or lifestyle conditions. But there are also opportunities that go well beyond just those conditions that we see on the television every day and every night. There's a lot more demand that we're seeing for those conditions that are not low acuity, episodic, or those lifestyle conditions that we discussed.

Tony Colistra: There's a tremendous demand from much more longitudinal products, like our virtual primary care or behavioral health solutions, that are ongoing and not episodic, one and done, or some of the things that we're seeing on the television. A couple of the things we're trying to do, Lukas, to continue to drive that adoption, I think it's really important, we're focused on a lot of innovations that enhance that patient experience. So if you think about how we increase the value that we deliver, very specifically, we have to expand our clinical capabilities to meet some of the demands that we've already alluded to: primary care, behavioral care, chronic condition management, weight loss, sexual health, men's and women's health, et cetera. But there's also other things like preventive screenings and other specialized conditions that we see demand in the marketplace, not just through DTC channels, but also through our channels with our health plan and health system partners.

Lukas Voss: You've touched on what you're trying to do, right? To drive that adoption or continuing to drive that adoption as it again picks up. I'd be curious to know what you're hearing from payers too about the current and future challenges with virtual care for virtual care providers.

Tony Colistra: Yeah. This is probably not a novel answer. I think I've heard this answer on a few of your other podcasts in the past. But one thing that we hear all the time is there's way too many point solutions.

Tony Colistra: There's too many options. Members don't know where to go. They don't know what to do. When they get overwhelmed, they just revert back to what they know, which when you're relating it to virtual care, they go back to brick and mortar or they just delay care. So there's also a huge lack of coordination and data sharing amongst those providers, which puts that onus on the patient when there are too many different point solutions. Where we feel fortunate where we can help a lot of our customers is our physicians can help unlock the value of all those different form solutions and get into the most appropriate, clinically appropriate referral as opposed to just throwing them back into the ocean. And those members often have options of 12 or even more different point solutions to choose from. The clinical provider-guided care, we think, is a real differentiator.

Lukas Voss: Yeah. Are there any other challenges that stick out for you in the market itself that are important?

Tony Colistra: Yeah, there's another one I mentioned because I think, again, this is prevalent across the entire industry, is our payer partners specifically are asking for help in educating the members to change this evolving perception of what is virtual care and what can virtual care do. So, as we continue to educate them that the range of services is much more than just this very low acute episodic care, it's so much more that we can provide in a convenient virtual setting. And knowing now that statistic I alluded to earlier, that 30% would prefer a virtual setting, we need to make sure that we help our partners communicate to their member bases about longitudinal services like behavioral health or virtual primary care, some of the wellness exams and laboratory referrals that we do for our members every day.

Lukas Voss: Tony, we've talked a lot about challenges. We want to talk about the positive too, a little bit, or at least the opportunities that we're seeing. What are some of those opportunities that you're hearing from payers specifically for virtual care providers?

Tony Colistra: Yeah. Again, probably not a novel answer, but it's something we're focused on every day, is how do we become more personalized with our members with every visit and every interaction that we have? Members want that and they expect that. They see that in every other facet of their lives today. So how do we make it more personalized at every turn, whether it be the initial intake to follow-up care down the line after treatment is delivered. Our ability to offer several different modalities is the start of that. So whether it's telephonic or if a member prefers just to chat or prefers to be on video, the ability to meet them in a preferred modality is obviously one really important aspect of starting off on the right foot with the members. The second is, there is a huge opportunity for chronic condition management and behavioral care. As all of us have heard many times in the industry, the shortages with providers and also the rising epidemic of these chronic conditions across the country. We have to be there and make sure that our members that have access to us, understanding we can help take care of those conditions as well as the sore throat and the pink eye that typically people think of when they think of urgent telephonic care.

Tony Colistra: And lastly, the one other thing I would mention that's coming up more and more often is our ability to provide fast access to care as that first point of contact. So when a member's not sure of the severity of whatever their condition might be, we can either treat that or we can help triage the member to that, again, clinically appropriate, either flow solution or site-of-care, if necessary. And I think those are just three things that our partners are asking us for help with as opportunities for the future.

Lukas Voss: And I think, again, all three of them in general are very important. I think two of them come back to what we started our conversation with is that consumer attention of fast access, that consumer experience. But then the other thing, the personalization piece is so important as well that you've mentioned. And what plays a big role, I feel like in that personalization piece is the use of AI right now. And we'd be remiss not to talk about it. I think it's an important piece to providing more personalized care in certain instances, and it can certainly play a transformative role in healthcare. We're seeing that right now. I'd love to get your thoughts on this and how you are applying Gen AI to operations with MD Live. And again, just your general thoughts on how this is going.

Tony Colistra: Of course. So AI is obviously unlocking new levels of efficiency across every different industry. Can't pick up the paper and not hear about the latest in AI and some of the new innovations that are occurring across the world today. So we use it to improve the patient and provide our experience. We have the ability to process now enormous amounts of just unstructured data in tasks that may have taken hours or even days to complete can now be done in seconds. So the key is how do we make sure that we use AI responsibly and ethically, and we have a whole center of excellence that's committed to making sure anything that we incorporate AI into is done in the right way as efficiently as possible, but also keeping in mind the responsibility we have to our members and to our customers. We use that to streamline those provider tasks, and in essence, it allows them to spend more time with the patient instead of doing administrative duties or tasks that they would've otherwise had to do. We can solve a lot of those issues and give the patient more time with the doctor as opposed to getting them in and out real quickly. And we know what that can turn into. Lesser quality care. So I absolutely see AI as an incredible opportunity. It's going to make providers’ lives easier. It's going to deliver better care to the member, and ultimately, we all have the same goal of improving that member experience and improving outcomes. And AI will absolutely help us do so.

Lukas Voss: Yeah. Tony, I feel like with all of these changes and all of these developments, we'll just have to meet again in a couple months and talk again. Right?

Tony Colistra: I would look forward to it. It's changing by the day.

Lukas Voss: Yep. There'll be something new to talk about. Again, Tony, thank you so much for your time and insights today. It's fantastic to have you. And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, MD Live by Evernorth. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at Becker’s Hospital Review dot com.