Canada’s Virtual Care Revolution: A Framework for Success

Virtual Healthcare Revolution Here to Stay

• The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a healthcare revolution in Canada, forcing a massive shift away from in-person interactions towards virtual care with over 70 percent of ambulatory care across the country during June 2020 represented by virtual care.
• The authors argue that the pandemic presents the opportunity to embrace a more patient-centric and cost-effective healthcare system, and set out a viable roadmap for the delivery of virtual care that is both equitable and geared towards enhancing the health of populations.
• Applied broadly across the health system, this care redesign would lead to a massive shift away from physical interactions, towards an almost equal ratio of physical to virtual interactions. This would greatly reduce infection risk, but also has the potential to reduce healthcare costs, increase patient convenience and create health system capacity.