At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state policy changes enabled a fast growth in telehealth, boosting access to care across states. According to a recent Harris study, 15 percent of individuals in the United States utilized telehealth for the first time during the pandemic, and almost one-third of all Americans had used telehealth at some point.
During this outbreak, telehealth utilization skyrocketed as consumers and providers looked for safe methods to access and deliver healthcare. 78 times more people used telehealth in April 2020 than they did in February 2020.
Telehealth Status Before 2020
The use of digital communication technologies to offer healthcare services remotely is referred to as telehealth. Many people mix up telehealth and telemedicine. Patient-facing healthcare techniques such as teleconsultation and remote patient monitoring are referred to as telemedicine. Telehealth is a broad word that covers not just telemedicine but also non-clinical services such as administration and training.
The earliest mention of telehealth is from 1955. The concept and accompanying technology have come a long way since then.
Telehealth is booming nowadays, thanks to technological developments. It was gaining traction even before COVID-19, with its adoption rate more than doubling between 2016 and 2019, making it the fastest-growing digital healthcare tool.
One of the most substantial telehealth initiatives in the United States was started by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Over 700,000 veterans got counseling from 300 healthcare practitioners via PCs, tablets, and smartphones in 2018.
This reduced the need to travel for medical care. Prior to the program’s implementation, the average commuting time for veterans was over three hours. Telehealth reduces this time to only 15 minutes. It’s no surprise that veterans were pleased with the service, giving it a satisfaction rating of 88–93 percent.
Telehealth During COVID-19
Many of the major problems in delivering health care during the COVID-19 epidemic might be addressed via telehealth. In addition, telehealth can help us avoid direct face-to-face contact, reduce the risk of COVID transmission, and provide community-wide treatment.
Official Support
The U.S. government and major healthcare groups have been striving to make telehealth more accessible. In March 2020, Congress authorized $500 million in emergency financing to pay Medicare providers’ telehealth-related costs. The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which contained a $200 million fund for telehealth services, was signed by the White House later that month.
The Telehealth Implementation Playbook Series of the American Medical Association has been updated. This handbook includes best practices and suggestions for maximizing the benefits of telehealth technology.
Telehealth Use Cases to Battle the Coronavirus
The following instances demonstrate the importance of telehealth adoption:
- Triaging and symptoms screening
Telehealth can be used to check for COVID-19 symptoms and determine whether or not a patient has been exposed.
- Contact tracing
Phone interviews with patients with Covid-19 allow researchers to determine who they were in touch with during the period they were potentially contagious, and to educate them about the need for quarantine, analyze if they have any symptoms, and advise them on what to do if warning signs do arise.
- Symptoms Monitoring
To minimize overpopulation in healthcare institutions and conserve hospital beds for more serious cases, patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 symptoms can typically be isolated and monitored at home.
Providing specialist care for Covid-19 patients in hospitals
Patients with COVID-19 who are hospitalized may require care from a multidisciplinary team (e.g., nurses, respiratory therapists, physicians).
- Providing non-covid patients with essential healthcare.
Telehealth can be utilized as a method to keep care as consistent as possible, avoiding negative effects from preventative, chronic, or regular care that might otherwise be delayed due to COVID-19 concerns.
- Monitoring recovering COVID-19 patients
After COVID-19 patients have been discharged from the hospital, healthcare practitioners can utilize telehealth technology to follow up with individuals who may need to remain isolated at home or be monitored for any rapid deterioration or long-term health consequences caused by COVID-19.
Telehealth After the Pandemic
Telehealth is unlikely to completely replace in-person visits in the near future. Telehealth does not allow for physical exams, and because many healthcare professionals and their patients have never met in person, trust and empathy are likely to be missed. The outlook for telehealth, on the other hand, is appropriately optimistic.
The government still has a big say in whether or not telehealth will be widely embraced. After the pandemic is over, authorities are likely to loosen the regulations on where patients must be physically to get telehealth services, which healthcare experts may provide virtual consultations, and which therapies can be funded.
Adopting Telehealth in Your Clinic
It might be difficult to incorporate telehealth operations into your clinic. Patients must be notified, internal and patient-facing processes must be adjusted, payer rules must be researched, and billing strategies must be chosen. Furthermore, you must locate a trustworthy vendor to design (or build on) the software and hardware services for your telehealth solution.
4 Things to Consider When Implementing Telehealth
1. Quality of service: A telehealth solution’s success or failure is completely decided by the willingness of patients to adopt it. The quality of the service will determine how closely the experience resembles prior in-person appointments, which is an area where a medical-grade network equipped for anywhere-anytime-any-device communication is critical.
2. Clinician Workflow: Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are busy individuals, and fitting telehealth appointments into their conventional workflow requires CIOs to assist them; one possible way is to develop a solution that integrates unified communications technologies like “presence awareness” into the solution to make things easy and user friendly as telehealth’s population grows.
3. Network Reliability and Security: From an IT standpoint, telehealth takes things to a whole new innovative level; with telehealth, healthcare facilities combine video, statistics, and voice across both wired and wireless configurations, but they must uphold the same degree of protection and always-on accessibility that they do for their data-only networks.
While telehealth may introduce a new layer of sophistication, the benefits clearly exceed the drawbacks. Bringing in a medicare solution provider partner provides CIOs with a trusted adviser to assist them in designing a safe, robust telehealth solution and managing it if such capabilities are not available inside the organization’s IT staff.
4. Endpoint Flexibility: This is where a thorough understanding of the ever-changing telehealth IT vendor environment comes in handy. Some telehealth systems, for example, can only connect with a proprietary end-user device, whilst others are more adaptable and can work with a wide range of devices.
If this seems overwhelming, keep in mind that telehealth is worth it in the end. Many believe that this is not the last pandemic we are facing. If this is true, then healthcare facilities that fail to implement telehealth now will not be able to meet patients’ expectations in the future.
