In the USA, chronic diseases and mental health treatment costs constitute about 90% of the nation’s US$ 3.5 trillion healthcare costs, according to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
During this pandemic, the acceptance of remote healthcare services has skyrocketed and people have opened up to the idea of remote treatments. Telehealth has the potential to improve medical treatments cost-effectively especially for chronic and mental health disorders as they require medical attention frequently and over a long period of time.
The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has upended life itself. Sick people, as well as the injured workers, are facing tough times as going to hospitals for treatment is extremely risky and has resulted in discontinuation of their therapies. Many firms are encouraging workers to avail telehealth services. In a nutshell, a lot has changed in this short while.
The Rise of Telehealth Services
Amidst the tumult of crisis, one conspicuous development has been in the telehealth, and in particular – telemedicine space. The US legislative changes for telehealth, offer new possibilities to providers whose practices have been closed due to the pandemic restrictions. Various stakeholders are encouraging wider use of telemedicine platforms to ensure safety and proper care. New rules allow injured workers and patients to access healthcare services from the safety of their homes, which until now had been reserved for rural areas only.
Towards Connected Healthcare, the Essential Paradigm Shift
Technology always enables governments, organizations, and people to quickly respond and adapt to change.
Connected healthcare, if adopted as an integral part of the system, has a lot to offer. The countries and companies that champion this shift will excel at various fronts, only one of which is crisis management.
Top 7 Benefits of Connected Healthcare:
- Crisis Management: At the outbreak of any disease, quarantine is the best remedy, and telehealth brings medical care to every house and they can easily get consultations over telemedicine platforms. This would help doctors to manage a significantly high amount of patients while keeping everyone safe.
- Even IME and Physical Therapies are Possible: With or without connected devices, Individual Medical Examination (IME) or physiotherapy, for instance, is effectively possible. The doctor or therapist can ask a patient to show the range of his movements, make app assisted decisions, can administer exercises, and suggest medicines, all in a remote interaction. The efficacy gets magnified with the use of connected devices.
- Great Edge with Cloud-Based Documentations: Virtual document analysis is one area which saves time and money. Printing patient history, carrying them, along with hasty on the spot review are unavoidable inconveniences which linger on to follow up visits as well. A neat, formatted, easy to update and ubiquitously accessible documentation saves everyone a lot of costs, time and effort while promoting better diagnosis as all records are available on a single platform.
- Better Health Outcomes with Disciplined Follow-up Visits: Connected healthcare services such as Telemedicine not only make follow up visits comfortable, cheap, but it ensures that an appointment is not missed due to avoidable reasons. This can go far in improving health outcomes. It is virtuous enough to become an integral part of the compensation healthcare process.
- Unparalleled Chronic Disease Treatment & Preventive Care: Advanced Connected devices or the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) are now available which can capture vital health stats over a long period. This results in better health outcomes and the prevention of chronic conditions while also saving large sums of medical expenditure.
- Unfathomable Opportunities with Advanced Tech: Virtual and augmented reality would simply change the feel of a Telemedicine appointment. Predictive analytics, when used on data from connected devices, can produce incredible results. The possibilities are endless, but only if we take the concrete steps towards connected healthcare.
- Limiting Fraud: The data collected via connected devices, routine remote Telemedicine consultations, and predictive analytics, can easily identify fraud cases, saving employers and insurance companies a lot of money.
The Vital Takeaway
Response to any change simply depends on a single factor; how fast can processes change to confront the new status quo. The agility of processes decides how long and arduous the transition would be. Connected health care gives the capability to quickly respond to change, disruption, and crisis while promoting the quality and driving the costs down.
To understand the mechanism of incorporation of Telehealth services into your existing ones, get in touch with us!
