Telehealth transformation will still take years despite pandemic boom, says Amwell co-CEO

Telehealth company Amwell made its public market debut after months of rapid growth because of the covid pandemic. But the enormous digital transformation of health care remains a process that will take years. This giant surge in visits may not be continuing into the same pace, and Amwell fairly expects it to go down for a little bit. Amwell’s goal is not to count visits, the company’s main performance indicator is the number of active providers on its platform.

Bringing more doctors onto Amwell’s platform is critical because it is important to provide patients with flexibility in how they receive health care. In the future, your doctor will connect with you sometimes in person and sometimes online. There are many barriers and complexities, that will take a long time.

Shares of Amwell were up more than 25% to almost $23 apiece in its first day of trading. Shares of Amwell closed up 28% at $23.07 apiece in their first day of trading. Amwell priced its IPO at $18 per share, also scored a $100 million investment from Google’s cloud division.

Based in Boston, Amwell has seen an explosion in users as the crisis kept people sheltered in place in an attempt to slow the spread of covid.

The entire digital health industry has seen an uptick in popularity during the pandemic. The digital health industry also experienced a major development when Teladoc announced it was acquiring Livongo. While the usage of telehealth services may not remain at such elevated levels as the covid situation improves, there are likely to be other changes from the pandemic that are strong tail winds for the implementation of digital connectivity.

There are efforts by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand telehealth benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. We see more and more payment parity, which of course should be the method of paying doctor fairly for their time. There is no real difference if a doctor meets his patient online or in office.