Virtual Care, Real Connection: Making Telehealth Work for Every Generation

Summary

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Virtual Care, Real Connection: Making Telehealth Work for Every Generation
Host: Lucas Voss
Guest: Mike Kurland, Vice President, Clinical Quality and Integration at Medwan Solutions
Release Date: June 30, 2025

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Introduction and Guest Background

In this insightful episode of the Becker's Healthcare Podcast, host Lucas Voss welcomes Mike Kurland, Vice President of Clinical Quality and Integration at Medwan Solutions. With nearly three decades of experience in healthcare, including 15 years specializing in health and digital health initiatives, Mike brings a wealth of knowledge in areas such as EMR implementation, telehealth integrations, and strategic vendor evaluations.

Mike Kurland ([00:26]):
"I work for Medwan Solutions, an advanced telehealth company. We have a kind of multi-sensor device and telehealth platform that fits just about any workflow that you're in."

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Telehealth Usage Across Generations

The conversation opens with an examination of current telehealth usage trends, highlighting that patients aged 31 to 40 are the most active users. Mike attributes this to their technological fluency and appreciation for the convenience telehealth offers.

Mike Kurland ([01:58]):
"The age group that primarily understands and is fluid with technology... they really understand the concept of convenience."

However, Mike emphasizes that older adults are not being left behind. He underscores the importance of designing telehealth solutions that cater to the unique needs of various age segments within the senior population.

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Principles and Guidelines for Aging Populations

Mike discusses the development of comprehensive principles and guidelines aimed at enhancing telehealth accessibility and effectiveness for older adults. Drawing from his experience at the West Health Institute, he outlines the collaborative efforts with leading geriatric care experts and institutions to address the adoption barriers in the older demographic.

Key Principles Introduced:

1. Person-Centered Care
   Placing the older adult at the heart of decision-making processes, ensuring that care models and workflows are tailored to their specific needs.

   Mike Kurland ([02:12]):
   "The older adult being served is really at the center of decision making. That is not new, but it really is a cultural mind shift for organizations."

2. Equitable and Accessible Care
   Guaranteeing high-quality care irrespective of age, ability, socioeconomic status, or health literacy, ensuring that telehealth services are as robust as in-person care.

3. Integrated and Coordinated Care
   Fostering seamless information sharing and care coordination across various healthcare systems to manage the complex needs of older adults effectively.

Mike highlights the variability within the older adult population, noting the distinct differences between those aged 65-75, 75-80, and 80+, each with varying levels of technological comfort and care requirements.

Mike Kurland ([06:33]):
"The older adults of today are very, very different than the older adults of yesterday. They themselves have done studies... and are willing to use new technologies like telehealth for their convenience."

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Turning Recommendations into Action

Transforming these principles into actionable strategies involves several key steps:

• Technological Adaptations
  Implementing features that accommodate vision and hearing impairments, as well as dexterity issues, such as larger icons and fonts.

• User Testing with Older Adults
  Ensuring platforms are user-friendly by involving older adults and their caregivers in the testing phase before deployment.

• Hybrid Care Delivery Models
  Combining in-person and virtual visits to provide flexible care solutions that cater to both provider and patient preferences.

• Proactive Technology Checks
  Conducting pre-visit technology assessments to mitigate technical issues and ensure a smooth telehealth experience.

Mike Kurland ([06:53]):
"Organizations that are ahead of the curve... have the ability for tech checks. They really set the tone for a hybrid care delivery model."

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Importance of Communication in Virtual Visits

Effective communication between patients and providers is crucial to set realistic expectations about virtual care. Mike emphasizes the need for clear dialogue regarding what telehealth can and cannot achieve, ensuring both parties are aligned.

Mike Kurland ([10:45]):
"Setting the expectations has to start with the providers and the clinicians and even the support staff before the visit."

He shares experiences from leading telehealth programs where setting proper expectations led to increased provider buy-in and smoother transitions to virtual care.

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Change Management and Provider Buy-In

A significant barrier to telehealth adoption is resistance from providers who are accustomed to traditional in-person care methods. Mike stresses the importance of change management strategies to secure provider support.

Mike Kurland ([15:11]):
"If the mindset isn't there with the key providers... you're not going to be able to get to the patient."

He advocates for leadership-driven cultural shifts within organizations, highlighting the impending healthcare workforce shortages and the necessity of embracing telehealth as an essential component of future care models.

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Future of Telehealth and Advice to Healthcare Leaders

Looking ahead, Mike envisions telehealth as a pivotal element in bridging generational and geographical gaps in healthcare delivery. He advises healthcare leaders to proactively integrate telehealth into their practices to stay competitive and meet evolving patient needs.

Mike Kurland ([15:47]):
"The future of care is knocking and we just have to be willing to open the door. These new workflows and care delivery models, they are inevitable."

He warns against complacency, emphasizing that organizations must adapt to technological advancements to avoid being left behind by more forward-thinking competitors.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Mike Kurland provides a comprehensive exploration of how telehealth can be optimized to serve every generation, with a particular focus on older adults. Through strategic principles, actionable guidelines, and effective change management, healthcare organizations can enhance telehealth adoption and ensure equitable, person-centered care for all patients.

Mike Kurland ([17:13]):
"The future of care is knocking and we just have to be willing to open the door."

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This detailed discussion underscores the transformative potential of telehealth and the critical steps necessary to realize its benefits across diverse patient populations.

Transcript

[Lucas Voss]

Hi everyone, this is Lucas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Joining me for today's discussion on virtual real connection, advancing telehealth access for every generation is Mike Kurland, Vice President, Clinical Quality and Integration at Metwan Solutions. Mike, this is such an important topic and I'm excited to have you.

[Mike Kurland]

Hi. Excited to be here. Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you and be on the program.

[Lucas Voss]

Absolutely. Great to have you. Could you introduce yourself to our audience and talk a little bit about your work in healthcare?

[Mike Kurland]

Sure. I work for medwan Solutions, an advanced telehealth company. We have a kind of multi sensor device and telehealth platform that kind of fits just about any workflow that you're in. But I've been in health care for probably and it's crazy, every time I say this, I'm creeping up to 30 years.

[Lucas Voss]

There you go. Yeah.

[Mike Kurland]

And about 15 of those have been Intel Health and the digital health space. So I've done everything from EMR implementation to telehealth implementations and just to even like from a strategic perspective, have evaluated vendors and implemented tools across the board, on the clinical floor and behind the scenes in it.

[Lucas Voss]

Awesome. And we'll talk about some of those things. And I'm always excited when I have somebody on who's seen sort of the progression of all of this. And of course we're talking about telehealth today and telehealth use right now, which surprised me just a little bit, is highest among patients age 31 to 40 right now. But again, that doesn't mean older adults are being left behind. And you've talked a little bit about some of your experience in strategy and developing some of these things. And I'm curious, you've helped develop principles and guidelines for telehealth delivery, specifically in that population, in the older population. What are some of these keys, key recommendations and how are they designed to make virtual care more accessible and effective for older adults?

[Mike Kurland]

Yeah, sure, sure. By the way, that age group that you mentioned, the 31 to 40, I mean that's the age group that primarily understands and is fluid with technology, but they really understand the concept of convenience.

[Lucas Voss]

Yeah.

[Mike Kurland]

And so I think adoption for them has like the least amount of friction because you're talking essentially the sandwich generation. They got their moms and dads and then they got their kids. So for them there's a lot. It's really important for them to maximize the use of their and telehealth is one convenient method of doing that to get clinical care. But the principles and guidelines that you mentioned, back when I was at the West Health Institute, we developed what we call the P's and G's. Imagine bringing together the nation's best in geriatric care and associations and groups like Milken Institute, aarp, Jefferson Health System, and the list goes on and on. Johns Hopkins Medically Home. So we all got together and we said, you know, telehealth has been out here for a while. Why are we struggling still to have it adopted for the older adult population in particular? And we brought it back to basics like these experts said, you know what, let's give people a starting point so when they're thinking about telehealth for this particular population. Now, the population, if you think about it, you know, it's very, very different from the 65 to 75, the 75 to 80 and the 80 plus. So you're actually dealing with almost like different generations of technology, understanding and comfort within the older adult space. So we had to take into account all the variations and also take the variations in the maturity level of each organization that is looking at telehealth for the older adult space. And this group of experts really came up with three guiding principles. And within those principles there are also guidelines, if you will, just kind of a place to start. The first one being person centered. Basically, the older adult being served is really at the center of decision making. That is not new, but it really is a cultural mind shift for organizations. A lot of organizations say that they want the patient at the center and that's not enough for the older adult. Like, you really have to consider the older adult's needs and how they would be at the center of care delivery and the models and the workflows for them. The second principle was really around having equitable and accessible care, regardless of age, ability and socioeconomic status, and even health literacy. Access to everyone should be equal and at the same level of high quality care that you should be expecting. As in person care. The last but not least is integrated and coordinated. Basically all these systems, the health care delivery model, it should be set up in a way that information is shared. The transitions of care are shared in a way that help promote the care and coordination of that older adult. We already live in a fragmented health system. Now, I must say that it has gotten better because there are new tools out there, but still, it does take a lot to still coordinate one's own care. Now, if you're between that 31 and 40 year old range, you have a lot more, I guess, tolerance level for errors. But the older you get, the more complex your care gets, the more comorbidities you have. And what matters to you is very, very different than what it matters to someone that's from 31 to 40. So those transitions of care and that care coordination is very, very important. Those are, those are really the principles. And within those principles there's a lot of guidelines. And if folks are interested in it, there's a paper in Jags and there's probably some presentations out there that are free for everyone. And if you go to the West Health website, you can download it for free as well.

[Lucas Voss]

So then looking at those guidelines, et cetera, how can providers, and you've touched on this a little bit, turn these recommendations then into real action specifically around those populations that may or may not still be hesitant about telehealth? Right, you've touched on it. That's sometimes the case, sure.

[Mike Kurland]

I'm glad you asked that. Because a lot of companies have taken the low hanging fruit like ones that are interested in making sure that they are successful across all age groups. They've done things like that within their apps and their technology that accommodates vision impairments or hearing impairments, even dexterity issues like having larger iconography and fonts. The older adults of today are very, very different than the older adults of yesterday. And maybe it's a mindset that organizations and providers have, but the 65 year old of today is a lot more tech comfortable and savvy than they were like maybe 10 years ago. I would say even our 75 to 80 year old population, and they have done studies on this, are comfortable and are willing to use new technologies like telehealth for their convenience. I think we have to be careful about generalizing and underestimating our older population. They too have lives. They want to stay connected with their, with their family and friends and they do that through the apps and devices that we live with every day. Now in general, the platform should be tested with older, older adults or older users, even their caregivers, before they get deployed. But there's other things that really good and like I see more mature healthcare organizations doing, they really set the tone for a hybrid care delivery model. They basically are telling their patients in advance, hey look, you know what, we can do part of your care in person and it has to happen in person, but there's a lot of your care that can happen through technology like telemedicine. And those organizations that are kind of ahead of the curve. They even have the ability for tech checks. I remember back in the day when I mentioned it before Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, they had a team of individuals that really would call the patient and, or the caregiver in advance and do a technology check. That way when the provider needs to hop on and do the assessment or do the interview, they're not dealing with any kind of like technology issues that could have been avoided like with a little bit of pre planning. And there's, there's other things like when you're thinking in the older adult and there they might already be kind of like unsure of getting care through telehealth. You know, there are certain, certain things that you might want to tell them in advance or like during the visit, say, hey, look, are you sure that you're in a place that is private to you or others can' really hear you, or are you okay if others can hear you? Ideally, this conversation happens before the telehealth assessment because you don't want that person to be heard saying those things during the visit with somebody else in the room. It's just like a lot of forethought that needs to happen and really setting the table for a successful visit. Those are just some of the things that you can do.

[Lucas Voss]

Yeah, I think that's so important, especially because what you've touched on earlier, those expectations are differently, right from the 31 to 40, 40 year old to then the older adults, those expectations of what can happen are different. And I love what you just mentioned and I want you to elaborate a little bit on that because I think it's very important. How important is it to really focus on that communication both for patients and providers to understand what a virtual visit can and can't do. Can you elaborate a little bit on that communication piece?

[Mike Kurland]

Yeah, that's a great point. I think a lot of the clinicians, you know, originally really kind of like push back against telehealth and it's because like, hey, I've, I've actually had a doc in the middle of like an auditorium say, you want me to practice this voodoo medicine? I've been trained to use my hands. And honestly, a year later he's like, well, you know, I think I could use it with my asthmatic patients that, that don't show up. This is when I worked at a pediatric hospital years ago when I was leading their telehealth program. But setting the expectations has to start with the providers and the clinicians and even the support staff before the visit. Now I understand, like we we want to set the expectations for the, for the patient and the caregivers, but really the expectation around the providers is probably the most important because if they're bought in, they can convince everybody else. And that has been the most sticking and most powerful friction point that I've encountered. I'll just give you a little bit about my background. Obviously I work for a company, but I talked to probably over 100 healthcare organizations a year or several different conversations. I talk to hundreds of vendors a year and before that I've been on the implementation side probably at 20 different hospitals, health systems and clinics. So I get the change management side. And the toughest part of it, even with upper management saying, hey guys, we want you to do this, we need you to do this. It hits a brick wall if the mindset isn't there with the key providers. And those key providers are the ones like the change management leaders of their departments. So if the expectations aren't set with them, if they haven't accepted and if they don't help lead the cultural shift and you need that cultural shift so you have the workflow and mindset shift, you're not going to be able to get to the patient. And by the time you get to the patient and if, let's just say, remember back in Covid, everyone slapped in telehealth. They kind of just, they said, hey, we got to do something to meet the needs asap. So they just grabbed the tool that they may have had sitting dusty on the shelf or they just adopted something real quick, threw it in there and just kind of like jammed in these visits as best they could. Now everyone did what they could in the short amount of time that they had. Now that we're like years behind it, the more mature organizations have paused and said, hey, how do we really look at adopting this so becomes part of our daily practice. What are the communication mechanisms that we need to have in place to be successful with our provider groups, with our ancillary staff and with the patients? So expectations and I know it's been a long answer. It really needs to start with your provider group. And if I was the CEO, the CFO and then the C suite, my expectations of my staff would be like, hey, look folks, if you know anything about healthcare today, you know that by 2030 we're going to be down in the United States by at least 80,000 MDs or DOs. We're going to be down probably around 350,000 RNs. We're already having long wait times. We're already dealing with agency issues and staffing issues, our staff has eroded over the last three to five years. So these new care delivery models, they're inevitable and telehealth is one of them. We need to start incorporating them. So that is a cultural shift, that is an expectation shift. And once you accept that, everything else will fall into place.

[Lucas Voss]

Yeah, it creates a trickle down effect that then trickles to the patient. So that change management piece is so crucial. I love that you outlined that. I think that's so key, having you on. We started with this and I don't want to age you, but again, 30 years of experience is so incredible. So much of this has evolved. Right. And I would like you to view, look into the future a little bit. Right. Five or ten years, you know, into the future. How is this going to evolve? What advice would you give health care leaders looking to scale some of these services as they're looking to the future?

[Mike Kurland]

Oh, man. People always get this stuff wrong. You know, it's like watching Back to The Future Part 2 and they thought like, what 2015 would look like with flying cars. I think what I would tell my future self and colleagues 3, 5, 10 years from now, it's like at the end of the day, these new technologies in telehealth, for instance, it isn't just about like connecting devices. It's about connecting people across generations, geographies and care delivery limitations. We've spent years building tools and they're going to keep getting refined. The innovators are going to keep innovating. The tools that are out there now, they work. They may not be perfect, but they worked. What's holding us back now isn't the tech. It's our tradition. I want to be careful, and I know this is going to sound cliche, but like, the future of care is knocking and we just have to be willing to open the door. These new workflows and care delivery models, they are inevitable. You could either invite them in or have them bust down your door, but by that time, unfortunately your, your neighbors and your and the competitors that you respect are a few years ahead of you.

[Lucas Voss]

Absolutely. Well, Mike, I'm certainly glad that we opened the door to this conversation. Thank you so much for your time and insights today. It was great to have you on.

[Mike Kurland]

Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. And please do reach out if anyone has any questions. I welcome them.

[Lucas Voss]

Absolutely. And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, the American Heart association center for Telehealth. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at Becker Hackers Hospital review.com the recommendations and opinions presented by our guest speakers may not represent the official position of the American Heart Association. The materials are for educational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement or instruction by the American Heart Association. American Stroke association the American Heart Association Stroke American Stroke association does not endorse any products or devices.