Making Telehealth Work for Every Generation

Why we picked this episode

Every week the HTC editorial desk listens across the health tech podcast landscape and selects the conversations that actually move a listener's understanding forward. This episode of Becker's Healthcare Podcast, featuring Michael Kurliand, earned its place on that list.

What the conversation covers

Design principles for virtual care that works across generational digital divides - communication, expectation-setting, and staff training for inclusive telehealth.

Key discussion threads

The bigger picture

The AI adoption question runs through every executive conversation in 2026. The evidence base is finally arriving: the largest controlled study of ambient documentation, published in JAMA, found clinicians saved 16 minutes of documentation time per day - but only a third of users hit the usage threshold for maximum benefit (our coverage). Meanwhile Rock Health has stopped labeling AI as a differentiator at all, because every company claims it - which is exactly why operating discipline of the kind described here separates winners from demo-ware.

Virtual care's policy clock frames everything: Medicare telehealth flexibilities run through December 31, 2027, hospital-at-home through 2030, and utilization jumped 10.1% in Q1 2026 alone (our coverage). Health systems making the moves discussed here are building against that runway - and lobbying to make it permanent.

The HTC take

Listen with a notebook handy: the most valuable material here is operational, not theoretical - the kind of detail that only surfaces when practitioners talk shop. Pair it with our related coverage below and you have a working brief on the topic.