Telehealth: A post-COVID-19 reality
Telehealth is at its crossroads since its demand surged during the pandemic. The McKinsey report on telehealth and virtual care gives a clear picture of its post-COVID-19 reality.
Let us have a look at the McKinsey report:
The total annual revenues of US telehealth companies were estimated $3 billion in the pre-COVID-19 period. The large vendors focused on “virtual urgent care”. They ensured to get on-demand instant telehealth visits for patients with physicians (most often it used to be with physicians they had no relation with).
More and more patients and providers have begun adopting telehealth, which is being utilized beyond virtual urgent care. Thus, it is estimated that upto $250 billion of current US healthcare could be virtualized.
What is the full potential of telehealth and virtual care?
1. Virtual urgent care:
In case of lower acuity emergency department visits, after hour consultations and urgent care visits there can be another option, which is virtual urgent care. This segment is the most common in telehealth today.
This lets the patients consult a doctor on demand, immediately and most often its someone unknown. Thus, they can avoid a trip to the emergency department and or urgent care center.
2. Virtual office visits:
Primary care visits or behavioral health consultations, follow up visits can be done virtually. Consults that don’t require physical examination or concurrent procedures can be catered through virtual care as well. These are quite often primary care visits, or cases related to behavioral health, where virtual psychotherapy session can be an answer. At times specialty care can be rendered virtually like virtual cardiac rehabilitation.
An omnichannel care model will be adopted, which is a mix of telehealth and in-person care. Thus, patient convenience is considered due to easy access and continuity of care. Providers can improve patient management especially those in chronic conditions.
How can this be done?
· Remote patient monitoring
· Digital therapeutics
· Digital coaching
· Virtual visits
3. Virtual home health visits:
Evaluation, patient and care giver education, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy can be done remotely through digital patient engagement tools and remote monitoring.
Some visits will have to be in-person but virtual home health services can improve patient’s and the healthcare professional’s experiences while rendering care.
It will also give an opportunity to home health providers to extend care to many more patients. It will also improve the connectivity with other healthcare professional and the care team.
4. Combining virtual access and near home sites:
The most convenient way to access care outside a provider’s office is by combining virtual access to physician consults with “near home” sites for testing and immunizations, such as worksite clinics or retail clinics located inside retail stores and called as convenient care clinics (CCC).
If a patient is suffering from COVID- like symptoms he/she can consult virtually. This can be followed by approaching a near by retail clinic for a COVID-19 test. Subsequent consultation by a primary care physician can be arranged through a follow up virtual check-in.
5. Administering Home medication:
When healthcare professionals can monitor a patient’s health with the help of technology it’s a blessing for patients since they can monitor symptoms, give them instructions for self-care and then provide telehealth.
Patients can be monitored by providing self-service tools and doctors can provide telehealth oversight of staff, which can be followed by home delivery of therapeutics.
Lifecycle Health is a telehealth platform that enables care. Above all it is simple and easy to use. Healthcare professionals will now spend less time and be more effective in care coordination.
We provide:
Secure video consultations, secure messaging platform, document sharing, scheduling and calendar, waiting room facility and reminder notifications.