The power of virtual preventive care in a post-COVID world

Preventive care is key to maintaining health, avoiding serious diseases before they happen, and identifying potential health issues early. Virtual primary care like Hello Alpha, through convenience, affordability, and privacy, makes preventive care easy and saves employers money at the same time.

What is preventive care?

Most of us think of going to the doctor as something we do when we aren’t feeling well or when we need treatment for a specific medical condition. However, healthcare can be about maintaining and keeping your health for as long as possible, too. That’s where preventive healthcare comes in. It refers to the routine care that proactively manages and maintains health. Preventive healthcare is key to diagnosing medical conditions before they become a problem and helping patients maintain optimal health throughout their lifetime. Some examples of preventive health visits are wellness exams, like physicals or well-child visits, and vaccination updates. For adults, it typically means screenings for conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, as well as counseling for smoking cessation and balanced eating habits.

Unfortunately, preventive healthcare doesn’t happen nearly as frequently as recommended. One study from 2018 found that only 8% of adults in the US who are 35 years and older received the preventive care recommended to them. Nearly 5% received none at all.

Why is prevention important?

Preventing serious diseases before they happen is one of the most important things you can do to protect your health. One of the most exciting benefits of preventive care is the early detection of chronic disease. The top five most preventable illness and diseases include:

• Diabetes
• Cancer
• Heart disease
• Infections
• Mental illness

Seven out of 10 deaths in the U.S. are caused by chronic disease, and 75% of all healthcare costs are due to those chronic illnesses. Skipping preventive care and screenings can cause these underlying health issues to go untreated and undiagnosed. For example, not getting a routine type 2 diabetes screening and appropriate treatment puts someone at a higher risk for serious complications from infections like COVID-19 or the flu. Neglecting high blood pressure could result in stroke, which can be severely debilitating.

Why care about preventive care now?

There have always been barriers to people getting the preventive care they need such as:

• Cost
• Not having a primary care provider
• Living too far from providers
• Not having the time to schedule an appointment
• Providers’ availability outside of business hours
• Lack of awareness about recommended preventive services.

In March 2020, the COVID pandemic became a new, unprecedented barrier. Initially, people couldn’t get preventive care because medical facilities were consumed with dealing with the pandemic. Later, people avoided care because it wasn’t safe, or their provider didn’t have availability. Today, people are simply behind or they are out of the habit.

It’s no surprise — it was a smart effort to keep themselves out of harm’s way. But this can actually lead to more damage than it can good. Leaving chronic disease or other illnesses left untreated can make you more susceptible to illnesses like COVID-19.

There have been unfortunate repercussions to this reduction in preventive care. For example:

• One study found that before the pandemic, about 64% of breast cancer patients were diagnosed at Stage 1, but that dropped down to only 51%.
• Another study found a decline in screenings for four cancers — colon, lung, prostate, bladder. For example, compared to pre-pandemic levels, colonoscopies, the key way to detect colon cancer, dropped off by 45% initially.
• A survey in May 2021 showed that about 25% of parents reported that one or more of their children had missed a scheduled vaccination due to the pandemic.

According to a report from the American Association for Cancer Research, 10 million cancer screenings were missed just during the first few months of the pandemic. At this point, there has not been an increase in the number of new cancer diagnoses or how advanced or severe those cancers were, but it might take years to realize the impact of these missed screenings fully, especially for cancers with longer recommended intervals between screenings.

Virtual care can help

Telemedicine has exploded in recent years, for good reason, and asynchronous care in particular is beneficial for preventive healthcare needs.

But, what is asynchronous telemedicine? Unlike an in-person doctor’s visit or a video conference with a healthcare provider, getting care asynchronously takes place at any time, and on any schedule. It’s a little like streaming a movie on-demand, versus going to a theater at a specific time and place.

There are many benefits to virtual, asynchronous healthcare, like convenience, affordability, and privacy. At Hello Alpha, we chose an asynchronous care model for our virtual primary care medical clinic because it offers unique benefits for those who face some of the highest barriers to healthcare:

• 24/7 and appointment free. Patients can start a visit on their time–whether that’s during a lunch break or late at night.
• Private and discreet. Patients have more privacy: they can submit their health information or questions to a provider without sitting in a waiting room or having to bring up an uncomfortable topic face-to-face, whether in a doctor’s office or on a video screen.
• Eliminates common sources of implicit bias. Implicit bias occurs automatically or unintentionally, but influences judgments and decisions about someone or a group of people. When a patient seeks care asynchronously, their appearances or style of dress are not the focus of the visit — it’s on what the patient shares and why they’re seeking medical care.
• Empowers patients and providers to be partners. Asynchronous telemedicine allows for patients to send a message any time they have a health concern or a question without feeling rushed. (The average in-person primary care visit is only 13–16 minutes.) Providers get to know a patient’s preferences and how to best educate them in a way that minimizes confusion.

Hello Alpha’s health check-in

Building on the benefits of asynchronous virtual care in general, Hello Alpha created a health check-in where patients answer questions about their health and habits, and then receive a personalized plan to help manage and prevent chronic conditions. This brings together what the traditional healthcare system broke apart: our physical, mental, social, environmental, and personal well-being. Employers and their employees have traditionally paid the price of this fragmentation through unnecessary specialist referrals, preventable chronic conditions, and unpredictable healthcare costs. The Alpha health check-in, which prompts patients on a regular basis, guides members to high-value, preventive care that goes beyond just treating symptoms. Members get a personalized health action plan with recommended Alpha visits, which diverts healthcare claims spend. Employers receive anonymized reports that assist them in predicting healthcare spend and making data-driven decisions for their teams.

More than 75% of enrolled members from a partner employer completed an Alpha health check-in in the first five months since launch, resulting in a 363% ROI just for these preventive visits alone.

The bottom line is preventive healthcare can help people live longer, healthier lives. In a world forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of preventive healthcare has become increasingly important. By leveraging the power of virtual care, particularly asynchronous care, people can access preventive care conveniently, overcoming barriers of distance, time, and mobility. This not only facilitates early detection and intervention but also fosters financial savings by reducing the need for in-person visits and unnecessary hospitalizations, putting weight behind the traditional adage that, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”