There are a number of quote-unquote “revolutions” in play right now, mostly as collateral consequences of the global pandemic health crisis that has gripped the world for over nine months.
But perhaps the most obvious and striking of the lot is the restructuring of the healthcare system that appears to be underway, featuring an increased reliance on a distributed model of care, including more home-based options and a much wider use of Telehealth technology to intermediate the process of diagnosis and care management.
One company that has popped onto the radar in terms of its growing association with these concepts is ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH).
Formerly a spirits and wellness business, ISWH has been reborn over the past year as a diversified portfolio company comprised of essential business lines that serve consumer product demands. This model now includes commercial-stage operations in the Telehealth and Home healthcare markets, as well as development-stage operations in the blockchain space.
The company also has other operations, including exposure to the spirits, wellness, and renewable energy markets. But its activity in home healthcare and Telehealth, as well as its growing exposure to the cryptocurrency and datacenter marketplace, should be seen as its most scalable and exciting facets.
The New Model
A year ago and a year from now. Those are two very different universes. We are going through a wormhole in time-space right now. The year-ago universe featured a healthcare system where you got in your care to drive to your doctor every so often for a regular exam or because something was wrong. Then you drove to a pharmacy or more significant care facility like a hospital. And healthcare took place at these locations, face to face, with a centralized model containing expensive equipment and people with white coats and clipboards.
The year-from-now universe features a very different version of this process. There, you will interface over your smartphone with your medical records center and schedule telehealth appointments and get screened. And only under rare circumstances will you actually go to a place called a doctor’s office. There are already startups working to produce home kits for easy-to-use basic vitals that hook directly up to your smartphone to let the doctor record your basic metrics.
Then, you will tap on your pharmacy app and wait for your meds to be dropped off at your door.
If you have a more serious issue, you can receive visits from a home care specialist unless intensive care at a hospital is absolutely necessary under the most dire circumstances. For most of us most of the time, we will likely almost never go to a doctor’s office, pharmacy, or hospital in the coming universe. Part of those things will come to us, either physically or virtually.
This is far less expensive because more patients can be seen per day by any healthcare provider, and things like hospital rooms or care rooms at the doctor’s office lose their scarcity value in this model.
ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH) is one of very few companies that has built a serious business model designed around this vision of the world, with commercial-stage operations, including growing revenues, in both home healthcare and telehealth solutions now in play in the marketplace.
The company has already demonstrated rapid topline growth in its home healthcare operations with five consecutive quarters of sharp sequential growth. Its most recent quarter showed revenues of nearly $250K, representing year-over-year growth of 79% (and 244% for the first half of the year) compared to comparable periods in 2019.
Onward and Upward
ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH) just announced this morning that its recently launched telehealth subsidiary, Telecare, has received its license from the State of Texas under Chapter 142 of the Texas Health and Safety Code to operate in Texas. In addition, the process of review toward Medicare accreditation is now underway for Telecare.
“Telehealth has become one of the most important growing innovations to emerge as a mainstream facet of the healthcare system over recent months, and we intend Telecare to become a key player in this narrative,” noted Alonzo Pierce, President and Chairman of ISW Holdings. “Telecare’s platform is built from the ground up to key off of first responder care. Telecare will transform the healthcare experience by creating an ecosystem of coordinated action that minimizes superfluous steps to bring healthcare providers, care protocols, and home health caretakers into synchronized activity to minimize costs and deliver the highest standards of ‘whole person’ home-based care to a growing community in Texas.”
According to the release, the Telecare referral intake process is fully electronic, with provider referrals opening a client relationship, coordinating care with providers, logging all consents, and assigning a home health caretaker, all achieved entirely electronically. Within twelve hours, an on-site assessment with a registered nurse is conducted, and full care services begin within 24 hours. The Telecare team is growing, and the Company intends to ramp up service across the state and to extend its service area into additional states over coming months.
The release went on to state that Telehealth usage among US adults has been climbing significantly. According to a survey by CivicScience, on a month-over-month basis from February to March of this year, the number of respondents that reported having tried telehealth jumped from 11% to 17%. As noted, this indeed marks “a watershed transformation in the relationship between healthcare consumers and providers.”
According to the release, this trend has been very much a part of the company’s strategic planning. It notes even that a recent report by Business Insider Intelligence predicts that this shift is set to keep picking up steam, and that management is aligned with this view: “ISW Holdings, through its Telecare subsidiary, is engaged in a focus based on that analysis, with additional strategic steps in line with this vision to be announced over the near term.”
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