In order for healthcare professionals to adequately provide for their patients, they need to not just include telecommunication services, but they need to invest and revolve around these services. With the COVID-19 pandemic still weighing heavily on everyone’s shoulders, and the possibility that a vaccination may never be possible, it is important to offer patients a different solution. They should have the ability to seek out the care they need from a distance, especially if they are a member of one of the vulnerable communities.
We are still in a transition stage, but the likelihood is that telemedicine will simply become medicine. As in, it will become so prevalent and commonplace it won’t be a new type of medicine, but just medicine itself.
You can begin this transition and use it to offer greater services and care to your patients. Some are common courtesy in the digital age, like reminding patients of upcoming appointments via SMS text or allowing them to communicate through an online chat if they need to change their appointment. Others such as video visits and remote monitoring devices will require more investment.
Top Telemedicine Services to Offer
Digital Appointments & Video Visits
Phone, online, and at-home visits can be done digitally using video. This is a good proxy for an in-person visit, especially if it is not safe for the patient to come outside to your clinic or if they live in a rural area.
Digital Prescriptions
Ongoing prescriptions, like birth control, should be able to be ordered via online requests, be approved, and even mailed to the person or sent through a special courier. This is the way that recurring prescriptions need to go.
Remote Patient Monitoring
For patients that cannot see you personally, or at least not as often as they should, remote monitoring can be an excellent service to offer. It works by monitoring the patient using a variety of technological devices right in their own home, to keep track of their health and any signs of illness remotely.
It is useful today for issues such as cardiovascular disease, asthma, and diabetes mellitus.
Store-and-Forward
In this method, most patients will not need to go through any of your staff at all. Instead, they will be able to send their data, such as images or biosignals, directly to the specialist they need. This option can help patients get the information that they need faster, though follow-up appointments will be needed in some cases so prevent misdiagnosis.
Practice Changes You Will Need to Make
As the format of medicine changes and the face of your clinic or care center changes to a digital screen, you will also need to take extra precautions. There will be new loopholes and legal changes occurring as society catches up with these innovations.
Fraud, in particular, is going to be more commonplace, with people thinking they can use the distance to earn new prescriptions or to become overprescribed certain medications, and so on. You will need to work with technology companies, governments, and even law firms to ensure that this fraud does not occur on either end. After all, as this article on healthcare fraud discusses: https://healthcarefraudgroup.com/medicare-fraud-attorney/, the risk of being accused of fraud is high as well. Protecting yourself legally both in preventative measures and in the event of an accusation are equally important.
Now is the Time to Act
Telemedicine is already in use and has been used for decades to help with disaster relief. Now it is time to help modern society get better healthcare, not just remote healthcare.
