Electronic Health Reporter

Lee Horner serves as Stratus Video’s president of telemedicine, bringing more than 25 years of experience in enterprise software and healthcare IT industry. Most recently, Horner served as the president of CareCloud, a health care technology company specializing in practice management and EHR software. During that time, his core focus was setting the direction and strategy of the company while managing the top- and bottom-line revenues. He also drove both technology excellence and platform growth to meet CareCloud’s clients’ goals. Prior to CareCloud, Lee also held executive roles at Vitera Healthcare (formerly Sage Healthcare, where I worked with him; now Greenway Health) and Eliza Corporation.

You recently joined Stratus as president of telehealth – what motivated your decision and why is this such an important field nowadays?

In today’s mobile and fast-paced world, telehealth is a necessity. Telehealth is healthcare 2.0 – it can cut wait times, costs for both the provider and the patient, inefficiencies. At the same time it can elevate the kind of expertise and quality of the care patients receive, as well as give new opportunities to connect doctors to the patients who need them most. Telehealth is the future of health. It’s not only preserving that face-to-face connection between patients and providers – which is essential to great healthcare – it’s making that connection available to so many more people in so many different contexts. By enabling these essential connections, telehealth expands the probability of people getting the care they need, and is inevitably helping to save lives.

What is your background in health IT?

I have been involved in healthcare IT for the past 10 years. I have experience operating businesses in the payer, ambulatory and health system markets. It is a great field to be in. It’s very progressive and always changing.

Why is health IT where it’s at today? What do you feel has made this industry successful?

This market is expanding rapidly and technological advancement is at the forefront of that expansion. Smart people with extreme passion for improving patient quality care are really what is making this industry successful.

What are some of the things that most inspire you about the space and it’s work?

I am inspired every time I see the changes we are making improve a patient’s quality of care. It is incredible to see our work start to make a difference.

What are the most important areas in telehealth nowadays?

One important area is how telehealth is opening opportunities for more health industry professionals – and this is in turn, leading to a more robust patient experience. Predictable disruption is a huge theme in telehealth. You saw unpredictable disruption with industries like car ride service – when Uber and other apps came out, people who weren’t taxi drivers were suddenly entering that industry. In healthcare, it’s different – apps are creating opportunities for people already within the industry, allowing more providers to help the patients who need them most and more patients to connect with the providers best suited to their needs.

A couple of other important areas are readmissions and urgent care:

The Affordable Care Act penalizes hospital readmissions, because it’s important to incentivize successful treatment. Unfortunately, the nature of healthcare and the nature of life is that you sometimes need to go back in for continued treatment or to inquire about something. But maybe you moved or you’re too sick to keep going back to your treating physician. Discharge solutions are allowing people to reconnect and get the follow-up care they need without the hassle.

Urgent and emergency care solutions are also becoming really important. Imagine a burn victim walks into an ER at 4 a.m. and needs to see a specialist – but the staff is all tied up or there isn’t a specialist working in that particular facility. Without an urgent care app, the patient would be waiting and suffering, while the provider would be struggling to give them the care they need. With an app, they’d be able to pull up a tablet and connect that patient face-to-face with the doctor they need almost immediately.

What do you think is the next phase in the future of telehealth? What needs to happen and what will happen in terms of how we see the health care industry in the next five years? The next 10?

The next phase in telehealth is about expanding technology into rural areas. These areas have access to smartphones, tablets and laptops – but they’re not really using them yet to connect with offsite specialists. As technology becomes more accessible and affordable, with patients needing to connect to specialists or the best doctor for them, they’re going to need to take advantage of on-demand, virtual care too. It’s the future of health care – and in the next 10 years it could very well revolutionize uniformity in access to highly customized care no matter where you are. The future is in utilizing the infrastructure we have in new and innovative care models.

What are your thoughts on the recent AMA guidelines – an indicator of telehealth’s importance?

Absolutely – the fact that the American Medical Association put together guidelines specific to telehealth shows that telehealth is not only here, it’s here to stay. Any time you see a major organization shifting its standards to accommodate a growing field, you know it’s a historic transition in how that field fundamentally operates. And in a field like healthcare, which impacts all people, that’s not just an industrial change, it’s a change in how everyday people live their lives.