Best Practices In Telehealth- A Beginners Guide For Physicians
Now day’s telehealth is considered one of the best well-established options for many physicians and patients. On the other hand, it is not suitable for many private practice physicians who are not concerned with the telehealth best practices.
Clinicians who are currently utilizing the technology of telemedicine and telehealth for the first time should educate themselves on some of the important issues linked with this type of healthcare.
Aim Of Telehealth:
Telehealth also includes the use of electronic means so that they can provide quality healthcare services to patients. It is not just restricted to video calls. In other words, you can say that it contains other electronic communications and even some phone calls.
Recent studies claim that telehealth is not that kind of healthcare available everywhere but it has made sure that providers have a broader reach and more efficient services.
Do The Top Physicians Use Telehealth?
A report says that there exists more than 20,000 primary care physicians and most of them use telehealth on daily basis. A lot of these uses also include managing medications, and behavioral health and are sometimes performed by gynecologists.
There are many known uses of telehealth such as cases that pertain directly to the gynecology practices. It includes urgent cases for minor illnesses, counseling for birth control, and managing chronic conditions.
For Whom Telehealth Works Best:
The notion of telehealth suits well for patients who don’t need a physical exam. In the setting of a phone call or video visit, the patients are often able to make their temperature. It also enables them to take their temperature and measure their blood pressure from their own home.
Moreover in a video setting the physician is also able to observe the patient, monitor respiration, look at the issues on the surface of the patient’s body and figure out problems on the where the patient should physically come to the office or not.
Is Video Consultation A Good Strategy?
A phone or video consultation is a great strategy for patients who live at a great distance from their provider. It is especially for the patients who reside in rural areas and also need special healthcare and consultation services. Remote care is also valuable for patients who are not sure whether their problem needs to be handled by visiting a doctor only.
Some of the patients now a day’s encounter contagious conditions. It also means that they need to avoid people who themselves are contagious.
Advantages Of The Telehealth Especially For The Physicians:
One of the main advantages that telehealth offers is flexibility and serves well for both the patient and physicians. So if needed a doctor can easily see patients either from home or the office. While he asks the concerned ill or injured patients to stay home. Both the parties either patients or doctors save the commuting time.
Moreover, the overall cost to the patient is lessened further by avoiding the need to take time off work.
Here are some of the key advantages that telehealth is offering exclusively to physicians.
- It gives the option to the telehealth providers so that they can easily see patients in less time and with the advantage of having just a few staff in the office.
- Even many healthcare practices are now realizing the benefit of the boost in revenue from adding telehealth to their services.
- It also allows the telehealth providers so they can access their patient’s records and also the results of the ultrasound from the outside of the office. It can also be done using cloud-based image management systems such as Thrice.
- Moreover, they can also easily save, share and attach ultrasound images within the patient’s record through safe uploads.
- Also, many physicians nowadays are utilizing specialist consultations and on the other hand, their patient is present there in the room.
- People also say these teleconsultations are used to discern whether they should refer the patient to any other physicians that are more experienced.
They are also considered important when specialty care is not available in the location of the patient where he lives.
Thus the gynecologists have also been reimbursed for offering telehealth consultations to the other providers in the health care organizations.
They are also beneficial in saving the patient a trip to the practice.
It also reduces the number of patients that are present in the office.
One can also license it to conduct tele sessions in other multiple states.
It also enables physicians to see the patients within a defined geographic catchment area.
They will also have the ability to expedite the licensure within the other states with the help of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.
This way they can expand their services in certain areas that will be useful for the gynecology providers.
The Best Practices Of The Telehealth
There exists many reasons why the population of patients could have gown down but who cares. We need to note down the fact that patients are specially equipped for or amenable to receiving virtual services from their physicians.
In other words, gynecologists are making strong efforts to lessen the number of patient visits in person and also increase their telehealth services. They should also speak directly about the availability of this service. It can be a short in-person conversation and it also needs efforts to educate the patients about the telehealth options for a follow-up.
It can be a talk about how we should call patients for appointment purposes. So you can say that some of the patients call to schedule an appointment. Many patients will also embrace the concept to see their physician from the comfort of home.
Many of them may be worried about privacy and they may feel like videoconference is not suitable.
Conclusion:
Physicians should be ready to discuss the limitations of telehealth such as the inability to perform a pelvic exam. Moreover depending on the assessment and the patient’s condition they might just need to come to the office after it. So these are the best practices in telehealth a beginner’s guide to physicians.
