Telemedicine – also referred to more broadly as “telehealth,” is set to become an important part of home health. Medicare has expanded telehealth coverage as part of the emergency response to COVID-19. States are also moving to remove obstacles for patients who want to establish a relationship with physicians using telehealth technology.
Patients may have concerns about whether they will receive the same standard of care, but they should rest assured that there is a growing body of research that indicates that patients are highly satisfied with telemedicine. This is in part because of the sheer convenience of receiving healthcare from the comfort of home, while other studies have pointed to patient satisfaction stemming from the lower costs of telehealth treatments.
Today, the expansion of telemedicine is born out of necessity. The highly contagious nature of COVID-19 means that healthcare providers need to triage patients before they arrive, and telemedicine is becoming an important part of the diagnostic process. Using audio or video conferencing tools, doctors can ask patients about their travel history and exposure to the virus, two vital components of evaluation. If a doctor believes a patient may have the coronavirus, they can make sure to immediately isolate them from the rest of the patient population once they arrive at the hospital, minimizing the spread. Additionally, patients who want to remain in quarantine are now able to use telemedicine to augment their home health routines.
What started as an emergency measure is set to become a regular part of patient care, and one that will help patients as much as doctors.
How Does Telemedicine Help Caretakers?
Patients may wonder what the difference is between telemedicine and traditional medicine. The only meaningful difference is speaking to healthcare providers via telecommunication devices, instead of in person. Meanwhile, it has proven a highly effective tool for caretakers.
How does telemedicine affect nursing?
Nurses in long term care facilities use telehealth to get in touch with specialists to consult over patient care. They might also use telehealth in an emergency, and telemedicine has demonstrated effectiveness for cutting down on the rate of unnecessary hospitalizations.
Virtual visits help nurses manage their time more effectively. Many patients simply need a check-in from a nurse to make sure they are taking their medications as prescribed, and telemedicine makes that a quick and efficient process.
How will telemedicine affect patients who rely on family members for care?
Telemedicine doesn’t simply make healthcare providers’ lives easier – it also helps ease the burden placed on family caretakers. Remote monitoring devices shift the burden of checking for changes in a patient’s condition to medical devices and the healthcare providers who monitor them.
Telemedicine at Home
What type of equipment do I need?
Patients don’t need special equipment to use telemedicine. Video chat services like FaceTime and Skype satisfied the requirements under Medicare, but the recent CARES Act removed that requirement. Now health providers can offer Medicare-covered telehealth services via an audio-only phone call. The CARES stimulus package also encouraged healthcare providers to evaluate patients exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms via a telemedicine application.
Does telemedicine work?
Research suggests that telemedicine can deliver the same level of care as a regular doctor. In a recent review of over 2,000 scientific articles on telemedicine, patient satisfaction centered on improved outcomes, lower costs, ease of use, improved communication, and decreased travel time.
Certain groups of patients, such as liver transplant recipients, often experience long wait times to see a doctor at a tertiary care facility, and one small study found that telemedicine provided the same quality of patient-physician interaction without the burden of waiting to see a doctor in person.
Another case report highlighted physical therapy patients using a telehealth program who had the same outcomes and as non-telehealth patients.
In a study of Appalaichian patients recovering at home from vascular surgery, patients supplied their healthcare providers with their basic stats (blood pressure, weight, pulse, and temperature), along with assessments of their pain levels, via a smartphone application. Patients expressed a high level of satisfaction and most importantly, their recovery outcomes did not differ significantly from patients visiting their doctors in person.
What are some of the best uses of telemedicine?
There are several areas of healthcare treatment that have demonstrated the efficacy of telemedicine. According to the American Medical Association, radiologists, cardiologists, and psychiatrists are the three types of medical providers most likely to use telemedicine on a regular basis.
Remote patient monitoring is one of the most common uses of telemedicine among cardiologists. For years, patients in rural areas have relied on telemedicine to ensure they have access to specialized stroke care, with promising results.
Radiologists were the most likely to use telemedicine and telehealth applications to store patient data and interact with other healthcare professionals.
Psychiatrists have been strong early adopters of telemedicine, using video conferencing tools to check in with patients when they are unable to schedule in-person visits. This is another area prime for growth: The psychological effect of the pandemic has created an incentive to explore telemedicine’s application for providing mental health services.
Several areas of wound care have also shown promising uses for telemedicine.
Post-operative wounds require regular check-ups, which telemedicine can provide. Modern phones come with high-definition cameras that can provide physicians with all the information they need to evaluate a wound’s healing progress. Patients also routinely have concerns about their wounds, and a recent study found that 39% of patients with concerns did not need to see a doctor, and 85% did not need emergency treatment.
Patients with chronic conditions benefit from regular monitoring, as in the case of diabetic patients with foot ulcers. Research also suggests remote monitoring could be of significant utility for early identification of foot complications, which can catch ulcers forming before they cause discomfort in the patient.
What are the disadvantages of telemedicine?
There are, of course, limits into how much medical care can be provided remotely. Some patients may simply prefer the social aspect of a one-on-one doctor interaction. Telehealth does not aim to reduce patient-doctor contact – on the contrary, the more time-efficient models of care make it possible for patients to have more interactions with their medical providers.
There are, however, human limitations to telemedicine’s uses. Nothing could have prepared the existing telehealth systems for the wave of demand prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Some growing pains are to be expected, as telemedicine options expand to meet the demand.
The future of telemedicine
Telemedicine works with healthcare providers to reduce the strain on the healthcare system and provide easily accessible, low-cost care. It is not, however, a substitute for a doctor’s ability to diagnose, nor will it replace the attentiveness and care of skilled nurses. These advances are simply a tool to make life significantly easier for both patients and their caretakers.
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