Although remote care had been steadily increasing in popularity in the years preceding the coronavirus pandemic, the pandemic compelled healthcare providers to expand their telehealth services.
Telehealth is here to stay and is one of the year’s top ten trends to watch. For this reason, it is critical for your practice to understand the current trends, potential benefits, and drawbacks of the shift to online healthcare.
What Is Telehealth?
Telehealth is a healthcare practice involving a provider and patient who are at a distance from each other. Distances can be different depending on the nature of the health problem and the care provider’s expertise. It can be as close as the next-door neighbor or as far as another country.
What Are the Advantages of Telehealth?
1. No or Minimal Travel for the Patient
For the patient, the biggest advantage of telehealth is no or little travel to the health care provider. This can make a difference in the quality of life of patients who are in chronic pain, chronically ill, disabled, or unable to travel easily.
2. Minimal Cost for Physicians and Patients
Another big advantage of telehealth is the minimal cost to the patient. Physicians also save on overhead expenses in terms of equipment and office space. Most conversations are done through the internet and are free of charge.
3. Flexibility in Scheduling
Patients and physicians can schedule a telehealth visit at a time that is most convenient for both of them. Since they won’t be meeting face to face, it provides greater opportunities to meet without dealign with logistical hassles. This promotes a more focused on the patient-physician relationship and less focused on the business of the office.
4. Decreased Wait Time
Telehealth decreases the wait time for patients who are waiting for a physician and for those who have to travel long distances and have difficulty scheduling an appointment.
Telehealth allows a patient suffering from a condition and their doctor to work together in a remote environment.
What Are the Possible Trends for Telehealth?
The demand for remote health monitoring and management is rapidly increasing with the decreasing costs of technology and increased affordability of monitoring devices. Patients want to track their health and manage it better. On the other hand, doctors want to guide their patient’s medical routines, even before they need to make a house call.
While Telehealth has been around for a while, only recently has it been used for ICUs. Telehealth can improve patient outcomes by helping the ICU team monitor multiple patients and maintain the care of patients who are moving between sites. In fact, with the use of Skype and other free video services, telehealth is becoming more audio-visual.
What Are the Challenges Faced in Telehealth?
Physicians are worried about being sued for malpractice by patients who are not physically in their presence. This is a valid fear, as patients may make mistakes such as insisting that a doctor prescribed a medication against their professional suggestion.
In developing countries, the challenges are more cultural with the need for elderly patients to be oriented of telehealth’s usage. While the advantages are definitely promising, it is a considerable generational obstacle to embrace these new technologies.
Conclusion
Telehealth is an exciting trend in healthcare. It has a lot of potential in the medical field, but there are challenges that need to be tackled. It takes many years to overcome these challenges, but the medical field will be better off in the end.
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