Modern healthcare faces many challenges. Consumers lack access to care, must choose between food and medication, and struggle with gaining affordable health insurance. Clinicians are being asked to provide the highest quality healthcare while being stretched to the limits with documentation requirements and dispersed geographic coverage. Hospitals and healthcare networks must meet increasing expectations to improve care outcomes and safety while lowering healthcare costs. In addition, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans say healthcare has “major problems” or is in a “state of crisis.” We cannot continue to conduct business as usual. Healthcare leaders are calling for new care delivery models that can transcend these challenges such as:
Telehealth is the use of technology to deliver health care services remotely. Traditionally, telehealth consisted of communicating with health care providers via phone, video, or email, but has grown to include technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and mobile applications.
With its integration into electronic health record systems, telehealth supports more ways to securely collect and analyze data, improving access, quality, and efficiency of care delivered.
Now there are three ways to deliver telehealth. The first is between health care providers. Tools such as email and video let health care providers consult in real time with offsite specialists from across the country. This can include multidisciplinary video conferencing with health care providers in different locations to discuss treatment plans, as well as peer-to-peer mentoring, such as a remotely located emergency department connecting with the emergency department of a larger hospital to discuss care for a client.
Another delivery of telehealth is between clients and their health care provider. Tools like video, phone, and email facilitates secure virtual visits with the client's treatment team. This can include virtual consultations between a rural client and a specialist in an urban hospital or with the pharmacist in managing medications.
Primary care virtual visits help manage post discharge follow-ups for chronic diseases like diabetes and provide access to mental health services like counseling. Additionally, clients may engage in telehealth services when they are immunocompromised and cannot risk being exposed to pathogens in a clinical setting.
Telehealth is also used as a tool during outbreaks of infectious disease, to limit disease spread. For example, COVID-19 has placed an increased emphasis on telehealth services and usage.
Finally, telehealth delivery also includes clients interacting with mobile health technology. Tools like wearable monitors, such as blood glucose monitoring, Bluetooth enabled scales that transmit data to the provider, and blood pressure monitors enabled with technology to transmit blood pressure readings to the clinic. This includes tracking health data using activity trackers and sharing the data with their treatment team, accessing health records at home, consuming health related content like videos, and engaging in smartphone games to improve cognitive fitness and reduce the risks of dementia.
This area of telehealth is expanding rapidly, as both consumers and providers look to technology to help manage disease processes and promote health.
To recap, telehealth is the virtual delivery of health care services between health care providers, clients, and their treatment team, and clients with mobile health technology.
As a sustainable care delivery model, telemedicine is taking patient outcomes and cost savings to the next level. As the industry searches for new approaches to the aforementioned challenges, virtual healthcare delivery has become a clinically and economically viable option alongside ambulatory and acute care.
Telehealth connects individuals and their healthcare professionals when a face-to-face interaction is not possible or not clinically necessary, and facilitates provider-to-provider consultations. Patients are able to receive care, get information about their condition, learn self-management skills for chronic disease, arrange for prescriptions, consult with a provider, and receive a diagnosis using telehealth services. In the past 30 years telehealth has been in use, it has been consistently shown to be a safe, reliable, and effective modality to deliver care. It is a convenient option for both patients and the clinicians providing care, and a secure environment for the collection and transmission of personal health information (PHI). These characteristics in combination extend where and how care is delivered for a more connected, stronger healthcare system.
Telehealth and virtual visits can increase access to care for underserved and vulnerable populations, rural communities, active-duty military personnel, and individuals unable to gain an in-person care visit, ensuring that everyone has safe, reliable, and effective care when and where they need it. Telehealth allows care to expand outside the traditional hospital to the community to reach a wider population, to improve health, create efficiencies, reduce costs, and meet consumer needs.
Authored by Cindy Ebner, MSN, RN, CPHRM, FASHRM and Colleen Harris Marzilli, PhD, DNP, MBA, RN-BC, CCM, PHNA-BC, NEA-BC, FNAP
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