Telehealth Triage Study Seeks to Close Gaps in Care

Looking for the Fit

According to Mr. Wehman, Remission Medical’s propriety technology platform is intended to be “frictionlessly embedded” within electronic medical records (EMRs), such as EPIC. Remission Medical uses a machine learning program to filter patient data from its EMR and industry-accepted and approved patient-reported outcome tools, such as PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System), RAPID3 (Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3) and PASS (Patient Acceptable Symptom State), and yield a remission score without adding additional workload to providers.

What Mr. Wehman envisions is a way for providers to press a button, ideally within the patient’s EMR, that would move patients into a virtual care pathway because of their remission status—“or automate them out of that pathway into a different pathway because their inflammatory markers are elevating.”

Next steps in this collaboration, he says, will hopefully lead to a way for providers to quickly see in their preexisting tool who’s doing well and who isn’t, and how that might align with practice management.

“We’re starting with just one small ripple in the pond,” he says, “which is, to ask, ‘What would you do if you could quickly organize and run your practice based on that stratification of remission?’”

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Once Mr. Wehman started Remission Medical, he sought to round out the services offered. Kyle C. Harner, MD, based in Greenville, N.C., and a partner in a private practice there, joined Remission Medical as chief medical officer in 2022. In addition to Dr. Harner, the company includes rheumatologist Emily Gilbert, MD, who completed her residency in rheumatology with the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. Completing the executive team are counselor Marie Celano, LCPC, Chief Clinical Officer Bhavika Amin, NP, and Chief Growth Officer Pete Celano, MBA.

State-by-state licensing is required for any provider conducting telehealth, an ongoing requirement. Dr. Harner, for example, has obtained licensing in 20 states. Concurrent with the Mayo Clinic work, Remission Medical is using EPIC for initial visits with patients, some of whom are self-referring thanks to Remission Medical’s partnership with KeyCare.

Dr. Harner

In addition to its partnership with the Mayo Clinic, Remission Medical has announced partnerships with Ortho Virginia, a large, independent orthopedic practice; Sentara Health, a major health system in Virginia; and Sterling Medical, a prominent multi-specialty, urgent care clinic in Idaho.

“Through these partnerships, Remission Medical is able to envelop our technology-enabled services to improve access to care for these partners’ preexisting patient populations and medical groups,” Mr. Wehman says.