Healthcare professionals have used telehealth in different scenarios and benefitted from it. Irrespective of whether its primary care or specialist, telehealth helps to reach out to more people who don’t have access to healthcare.
COVID-19 has made it imperative to relax the restrictions on the use of telehealth services. State officials are working towards facilitating the process of reaching out to underserved population through telehealth.
Benefits of Telehealth to patients and healthcare professionals:
1. Preventive care:
When patients are in touch with healthcare professionals till the next appointment via telehealth services, they can address patient concerns before any adverse event triggers leading to readmission.
Calls, texts, videos or any other form of communication method encourage patients to share their health concerns, medication information, scheduling and more.
This helps to proactively address health issues ensuring the patient is on the road of recovery.
2. Improves patient engagement:
Healthcare is getting customized and patient-focused. We are now shifting to value-based reimbursement and this had led hospitals to look at better methods to communicate with patients to engage in self-care.
Patients also need to be educated in taking care of themselves between visits. Especially in chronic health conditions, telehealth remotely monitors the patient’s health. It improves outcomes by cutting costs.
3. Access to healthcare for the underserved population:
Rural communities face a shortage of healthcare providers and facilities. With the help of smartphones, computers, tablets, laptops through virtual care patients can access healthcare.
Hospitals in rural areas are shutting down and telehealth is a ready solution to this impending challenge. Rural patients need to travel long distances to access care. Transportation is also a challenge thus virtual care is just the right solution for rural patients.
4. Boost workflow efficiency:
Telehealth boosts clinical workflow efficiency. It can act as a medium to quickly prioritize care, triaging and improve communication, collecting and using patient data to render better care by taking appropriate medical decisions. Such tools facilitate improving patient care, performance and satisfaction.
5. Maximizes revenue for professionals:
Telehealth reduces the overhead cost per visit since time consumed by patients and doctors is lesser.
Physicians can bill for uncompensated phone calls while extending hours to capture more billable time. It cuts down on no-shows and can improve the efficiency of the practice.
6. Reduces the follow-up visits:
Patients frequently consulting doctors about their medical condition, are less likely to need a personal visit.
Reports can be shared online, through applications to determine the future course of treatment. This eliminates the need to visit in person.
7. Better care for chronic conditions:
Patients need to manage serious chronic conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, in such cases Remote Patient Monitoring often replaces office or emergency visits especially while the disease is being mismanaged.
The gap in treatment is lesser and the patients don’t forget or lapse the course of treatment, which is vital for chronic cases.
8. Reduces financial burden:
Being in person with the healthcare professional add up to the cost of travel, parking charges, and childcare costs. At times taking off from work becomes imperative.
All this adds upto the cost of accessing healthcare and telehealth saves this cost. Virtual visits have lower copays and administrative fees as well. Emergencies can be prevented since care is available on a frequent basis thus sparing costly visits to urgent care facilities or emergency room.
9. Adds value to patient care:
Nurses can conduct the same duties via telehealth services as in a clinical setting like monitoring patients for vital signals and give instructions to patients on appropriate care.
Also, it is highly effective while treating mental health patients since an early diagnosis leads to timely treatment for healthcare conditions. It also prevents patients from getting exposed to infectious diseases and corona pandemic has made this facility precious.
10. Reduces patient no-shows:
Due to lack of transportation patients aren’t able to reach the healthcare centres leading to high absenteeism rates, no shows, missed appointments, and a disruption in the delivery of care.
They fail to continue treatment, leading to reduced medication adherence and poor patient outcomes. Telehealth facilities combat all these challenges.
There are concerns about reinstating the relaxed restrictions on the usage of telehealth services in the post-COVID-19 period. With growing awareness and acceptance about telehealth benefits for both healthcare professionals and patients, surely the government authorities will reconsider the move to reinstate the restrictions.
Chalking out new rules to facilitate its use becomes imperative to overcome barriers to accessing telehealth facilities.
Lifecycle Health offers a complete telehealth platform that is simple and easy to use. We offer secure video facility, secure messaging, document sharing, scheduling of appointments, waiting room facilities, reminder notifications, and much more.
Get in touch with Lifecycle Health team to know more.