The right telehealth solution should have the flexibility to meet your specific needs. Whether you need an online video conference service or remote patient monitoring the options are endless.
Using a telehealth solution can help address other social determinants of health. For example if a person is poor and can’t afford to travel long distances to see their doctor they could get the care they need at home with a realtime consultation.
Improved Access to Care
Telehealth helps address healthcare access issues by removing barriers such as physical proximity to specialized care services or simply not having enough time in one’s schedule. Consumers report high levels of satisfaction with telehealth and in many cases a better experience than traditional inperson visits.
Patients can use telehealth to consult with their doctors over video phone or text to get answers to questions or receive treatments. In addition telehealth offers the ability to monitor vital signs remotely from the patient’s home.
Additionally telehealth offers the ability to send educational resources to patients for selfcare at home such as disease management guides videos and health education pamphlets. This allows the patients to learn more about their condition from a source they trust and is a great way to reduce expensive inperson visit costs.
Improved Quality of Care
The COVID19 crisis has highlighted the urgency to embed telehealth into the care continuum at scale. Healthcare systems that win in the longterm will be those who leverage telehealth to make themselves distinctively highquality and accessible to consumers.
Telehealth solutions are a broad spectrum of digital healthcare services ranging from remote patient monitoring for diseases like diabetes and hypertension to realtime virtual visits with doctors through videoconferencing (telemedicine). In addition many telehealth offerings include health education that helps patients understand their conditions and what they can do to manage them at home.
While practices launched telehealth during the pandemic to provide appointments they continue to use it as a routine delivery method for mental or behavioral health visits lab reviews and other appointment types that don’t require inperson encounters. Consumers have voiced their satisfaction with the service and studies show that they experience better outcomes when care is delivered via telehealth. They also benefit from reduced travel time and related stresses.
Reduced Costs
Keeping healthcare costs low is an ongoing challenge for any facility. Implementing telehealth and Remote Patient Management (RPM) helps to keep costs in control while still providing highquality care to patients.
With telehealth the costs of transporting patients scheduling appointments and travel time are all eliminated. Patients can meet with doctors without having to leave their home and can even avoid the cost of visiting a specialist or hospital.
Studies have shown that telehealth can be more costeffective than traditional care for certain services. For example remote monitoring of highrisk pregnancies has been found to reduce the number of inhospital visits and associated costs. Similarly teletriage where nurses screen patients before referring them to a specialist can also save the health system money through reduced homevisit nurse salaries and staff travel costs.
Brokers and groups looking to provide quality healthcare with a great customer experience can use the growing trends in telehealth to deliver advanced benefits like telemedicine ongoing plan navigation and more. Contact Crumdale Partners today to learn how.
Increased Sustainability
A growing focus on patient satisfaction and cost reduction has fueled higher rates of telehealth solutions. This includes everything from remote patient monitoring to specialized physiciantoprovider communication which also extends to healthcare education and even to wearable devices.
The modern healthcare consumer is accustomed to aroundtheclock customer service and the use of smart technology and they want the same from their medical experience. Having telehealth options available to them provides them with this access while also reducing extensive wait times and preventing unnecessary trips to the emergency room.
Additionally replacing physical visits with telehealth sessions reduces the need for transportation which cuts back on carbon emissions. In fact according to Australian research the healthcare system contributes seven percent of all carbon emissions in that country with much of this attributed to travel by patients and providers alike. Using telehealth allows you to offer sustainable ecofriendly care that can improve the health of your entire community.
