Dr Brian Mullen Shares Digital Health Advancements at The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic

The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic offers to patients a virtual second opinion, which can be extremely valuable for those facing a diagnosis of a serious condition, in need of a serious surgical procedure, considering a possibly risky treatment, experiencing a deteriorating condition, or struggling with a medical challenge.

For patients in need of a second opinion for a serious health situation, The Clinic enables patients to receive virtual advice, expanding access to care, says Brian Mullen, PhD, head of innovation and product, The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic.

Transcript

Could you provide an overview of The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic and its unique approach to health care?

Through The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, we offer virtual second opinions to anybody, pretty much anywhere in the world—obviously, there's some limitations on geography, both domestically and internationally—so that people can access the world's best providers at Cleveland Clinic with a wider range of specialty specialists and subspecialists. I think there's over 3500 specialists and 550 subspecialists at our clinic who we match people with to help them access second opinions. We do this by using a virtual platform [so] that people can have that benefit from their home without having to travel.

What sets The Clinic apart from traditional health care providers?

So, for patient care, it's enabling access. It really untethers people from their geography to get to the specialist that might be best for them to perform that second opinion without having to go through the travel and the navigation that comes with that. So if you were to travel, you might have to take days off for work or you might be limited by your options of the quality of the person in your region that you can travel to and have an in-person visit. So, from a patient benefit, that's a first thing; there's a direct benefit for experience.

In addition, over 72% of the patients that do get a second opinion in our program have at least a treatment or a change in their treatment plan, and over 90% self-report, saying that they would implement the recommendations that are provided by the providers.

From a patient benefit standpoint, you get the benefit from the experience and a benefit of increased access to quality of depth of knowledge and expertise that might not be in their region that they could get to in person. And then that all drives into efficiency, right? So if you can schedule easily, quickly, work with us, and create that access, it's a lot easier to do it from your home and more efficient.

In addition, our service also does a lot of other work for the patient to make it more efficient and easy for them. When the person comes in, there's a nurse intake visit and then we go and collect the relevant medical records that will be needed to execute that second opinion. So those are key things that from an efficiency standpoint all drive patient benefit, as well as the benefit of the quality of the second opinions that are provided by these world class experts.