This piece is about a potentially overlooked stock, ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH), and its recent launch of a telehealth subsidiary to pair up with its established and successful home healthcare operations.
To put this analysis in context, it’s important to capture the significance of the seemingly unstoppable trend toward telehealth now clearly underway.
There are several core revolutions underway at present, catalyzed by the unprecedented obstacles set in our midst by the global pandemic health crisis, now in its eighth month and counting – and likely to continue to shaping the destiny of communities, nations, and organizations around the world for at least another year.
The Future is Now
Those revolutions may be abstractly summarized by the basic idea of trying to live a normal life while social distancing from each other. This broad socially adopted mandate manifests itself in different ways in different domains of life.
In sports, for example, it means live NFL games with no one in the stands, fake crowd noises, virtual watch parties, and lots and lots of testing in the locker room. In the entertainment industry, it means movies released over streaming services with no theatre launch, and audience reactions almost entirely on social media. In dining, it means ghost kitchens, curbside pick-up, scanner-code menus, and contactless leave-at-door delivery.
This basic premise is driving everything right now, and it’s never going to be the same again for many of these industries. Some of these transformative shifts are forever – the genie is out of the bottle on work-from-home, for example. Another apt example of permanent transformative evolution is in the healthcare space, where Telehealth has become ascendant to a degree that banishes any notion of a return to the pre-covid paradigm. It’s simply superior, and the pandemic forced regulators to leap over philosophical sticking points and get on with “progress” in a qualitative sense.
Now, here we are, and investors are taking note.
Which brings us to ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH), an interesting small-cap stock trading on the OTC that just announced the official licensed commercial “birth” of its Telehealth subsidiary, Telecare.
Telecare is a Texas-based home healthcare operation that leverages digitally coordinated intake and care-management systems to synchronize home-based “whole patient” care that strips out the unnecessary costs, inconvenience, social contact, and delays, which is very on-brand for the post-covid healthcare paradigm that will define the playing field for likely decades to come.
Up and Running
ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH) just announced this morning that its recently launched telehealth subsidiary, Telecare Home Health, LLC (“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.”
The macro context also supports this focus, which suggests ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH) could be worth a look at present levels.
