During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth has become a crucial tool that helps patients avoid crowded waiting rooms and potential contact with airborne infectious agents. In addition, telehealth allows physicians to follow up on their patients’ care from the comfort of their home.
Healthcare providers are often burdened with administrative tasks that detract from patient care. However, telehealth solutions increase workflow efficiency for all involved.
Improved Patient Care
Telehealth technology has a profound impact on patients around the globe. It promotes easy access to distant healthcare facilities and improves patient health outcomes. In particular, telehealth helps patients from remote areas who need help to easily travel to see their physicians in person due to geographical and other barriers.
As a result, telehealth has become the hottest healthcare technology area worldwide after the COVID-19 pandemic, with its use accelerating rapidly in many nations. Its principal function is boosting access to distant healthcare services. However, it also has the potential to help resolve disparities in patient care for disadvantaged groups, especially those with a less robust digital infrastructure and fewer resources.
An omnichannel care model that leverages virtual office visits, remote patient monitoring, and digital therapeutics can help meet patients’ needs, increase their satisfaction with healthcare, and reduce patient and provider costs. It can also be an effective way to improve patient engagement and compliance with chronic care management programs.
One of the most essential steps in improving patient outcomes is providing patients with quality, unbiased content that educates them on their condition and what they can do to minimize their symptoms. It will prevent physician burnout and make patients more satisfied with their overall care experience. A study revealed that more than 75% of patients say receiving patient education would make them feel more confident with their care.
Increased Access to Care
A patient’s ability to get healthcare services is hampered by several variables, such as travel costs and missed time from in-person clinic visits. Patients can consult with physicians at home without incurring costs using telehealth solution providers. This lessens the strain on overworked physicians and makes it simpler for them to keep appointments.
Telehealth solutions allow providers to interact with consumers remotely, using video consultations, phone consultations, or messaging platforms. Increasingly, these telemedicine solutions are used to meet low acuity care needs that previously were seen in the emergency department, such as minor sinus infections or stomach upsets.
Consumers also benefit from telehealth services that offer remote patient monitoring, such as devices that track vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rate. With this, providers can monitor a patient’s health and intervene before symptoms escalate into serious problems.
However, a wide range of obstacles can limit telehealth adoption, including lack of awareness, difficulty accessing digital devices or reliable internet connections, varying levels of digital literacy, and the cost of the technology. Disadvantaged populations, including minorities, low-income, and education, are more impacted by these barriers.
Reduced Costs
With physician burnout and workload a concern across healthcare, many doctors are stretched thin. Embracing telehealth solutions that enable virtual consultations with specialists reduces the burden on these overwhelmed physicians while providing patients with a convenient, accessible option.
Moreover, telehealth can help reduce costs in other ways, too. For example, it can allow smaller hospitals to hire specialist doctors a few days a week rather than having one full-time, thereby allowing the hospital to save on staffing costs while still having access to the expertise they need. That is especially true for specialist care, such as radiology, where it is expected to have a shortage of doctors.
Another way that telehealth can reduce costs is by reducing unnecessary visits to the emergency department. Studies show that virtual visits and remote patient monitoring can significantly reduce the number of costly emergency department visits for certain conditions, which in turn helps reduce overall healthcare costs.
As a result, many healthcare organizations are scaling their telehealth programs and taking advantage of this growing opportunity. To reap the benefits of telehealth, developing a value-backed roadmap and strategies that digitally enable end-to-end care journeys is vital. It includes defining approaches to reimbursement and coverage, optimizing networks, and accelerating value-based contracting to incentivize telehealth. It will set the stage for sustainable growth as the healthcare industry moves toward a value-based care model.
Increased Efficiency
With physician burnout at the forefront of the healthcare industry, telehealth allows providers to reduce the number of in-person visits they need to conduct. It enables them to assess and triage patients remotely, allowing them to determine the best environment for the patient’s needs quickly.
Additionally, the remote nature of a telehealth visit means that physicians can avoid dealing with patients in crowded waiting areas, where there is a greater risk for airborne infectious disease transmission. It saves time and resources, enabling them to serve more patients in the same amount of time.
As healthcare evolves into a consumer-driven model, patients have become accustomed to receiving streamlined, customer-focused technology experiences. As such, telehealth offers an easy way for healthcare organizations to meet patients’ needs while providing them with a convenient and affordable care experience.