Telemedicine Users Before Pandemic vs. After Pandemic

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 50 million individuals worldwide utilized telemedicine services. However, in the wake of the pandemic, there has been a seismic surge in telemedicine adoption, with an astonishing 200% increase in users. This exponential growth underscores the growing acceptance and reliance on virtual care solutions to meet healthcare needs.

Hospitals Based on Telemedicine Technology Raised

Virtual consultation has transcended its niche status to become an integral component of healthcare delivery, especially in hospital settings. Recent statistics reveal that 60% of hospitals have embraced telemedicine technology, marking a significant 40% increase compared to pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, an overwhelming 70% of hospitals now offer telemedicine services as their primary mode of healthcare delivery, reflecting a paradigm shift in patient care practices.

Benefits of Telemedicine

The benefits of telemedicine are multifaceted, offering a myriad of advantages for both patients and healthcare providers alike. Firstly, telemedicine enhances accessibility to healthcare services, particularly for individuals residing in remote or underserved areas. Through virtual consultations, patients can access medical care conveniently from the comfort of their homes, eliminating geographical barriers.

Additionally, telemedicine promotes patient convenience by facilitating virtual appointments, thereby reducing the need for time-consuming and costly visits to healthcare facilities. This not only saves patients valuable time and resources but also promotes adherence to treatment plans and follow-up appointments.

Moreover, telemedicine plays a pivotal role in cost containment within the healthcare sector. By minimizing unnecessary hospital visits and travel expenses, telemedicine reduces overall healthcare expenditures while optimizing resource utilization. This cost-effective approach ensures efficient allocation of healthcare resources, benefiting both patients and healthcare systems.

Furthermore, telemedicine enhances patient outcomes by enabling timely interventions and follow-ups. Through remote monitoring and virtual consultations, healthcare providers can proactively address health concerns, leading to improved health outcomes and reduced hospital readmissions.

Lastly, telemedicine fosters enhanced communication between patients and healthcare providers, fostering greater engagement and collaboration in the healthcare decision-making process. By facilitating seamless interaction and information exchange, telemedicine strengthens the patient-provider relationship, ultimately enhancing the quality of care delivered.

Predicted Telemedicine Growth in the US

Looking ahead, the future of telemedicine appears exceptionally promising, with a projected annual growth rate of 30% in usage within the United States. By 2025, the telemedicine market in the US is forecast to soar to a staggering $250 billion, underscoring its burgeoning significance in the healthcare industry. Additionally, it is estimated that by 2025, 60% of all healthcare visits will be conducted via telemedicine platforms, reflecting the widespread adoption and acceptance of virtual care solutions.

Wrapping UP

Telemedicine has emerged as a transformative force in modern healthcare, revolutionizing the delivery of medical services and redefining patient care paradigms. As healthcare landscapes evolve, DrCare247 leads the charge in telemedicine innovation. With its intuitive interface and patient-focused approach, DrCare247 revolutionizes healthcare delivery. Join us and embrace a future of connected, efficient, and patient-centric care.

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1. Convenient Access to Healthcare 

One of the most significant advantages of telehealth for women is the convenience it offers in accessing healthcare services. With telehealth platforms, women can schedule virtual appointments with healthcare providers from the comfort of their homes or offices. This eliminates the need for travel and long wait times in crowded waiting rooms, making it easier for women to seek medical advice and treatment when needed. 

2. Expanded Access to Specialists 

Telehealth breaks down geographical barriers, allowing women to access specialists and healthcare services that may not be available in their local area. Through telehealth platforms, women can connect with specialists such as gynecologists, dermatologists, and mental health professionals, regardless of their location. This expanded access to specialists ensures that women receive timely and comprehensive care, regardless of where they live. 

3. Improved Management of Chronic Conditions 

For women with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or asthma, telehealth offers valuable tools for monitoring and managing their health. Remote monitoring devices and mobile apps allow women to track vital signs, medication adherence, and symptoms from home, providing healthcare providers with real-time data to assess their condition and adjust treatment plans as needed. This proactive approach to managing chronic conditions can lead to better health outcomes and an improved quality of life for women.

4. Enhanced Prenatal and Postnatal Care 

Telehealth plays a crucial role in supporting women during pregnancy and postpartum, offering convenient access to prenatal and postnatal care services. Through telehealth platforms, pregnant women can attend virtual prenatal visits, receive personalized guidance on nutrition and exercise, and connect with lactation consultants and postpartum support groups from home. This ensures that women receive comprehensive care throughout their pregnancy journey, leading to healthier outcomes for both mother and baby.

5. Mental Health Support 

Women frequently encounter distinct mental health hurdles, such as stress, anxiety, depression, and postpartum depression. Telehealth provides a convenient and confidential way for women to access mental health support and counseling services. Through virtual therapy sessions and support groups, women can receive the emotional support and guidance they need to manage their mental health and well-being. Telehealth eliminates the stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment and ensures that women can access support when they need it most.

Empowering Women Beyond Convenience 

While convenience is undoubtedly transformative, the impact of telehealth extends far beyond mere timesaving and convenience. It empowers women in several critical ways: 

• Overcoming Financial Hurdles: Telehealth often proves to be more cost-effective than traditional in-person appointments due to reduced overhead expenses and potentially lower fees. This affordability factor makes high-quality healthcare more attainable for women with limited financial means, ensuring equitable access to essential health services. 

• Empowering Rural Communities: By linking women in remote or underserved areas with specialized healthcare professionals, telehealth bridges the geographical gap in healthcare access, ensuring that everyone, regardless of location, has equal opportunities to thrive.

Wrapping Up 

Telehealth is enabling women to assert control over their health by offering convenient access to healthcare services, broader access to specialists, better management of chronic conditions, improved prenatal and postnatal care, and invaluable mental health support. By harnessing telehealth technologies, women can prioritize their health and well-being, paving the way for healthier lives and an enhanced overall quality of life. We invite healthcare providers to partner with DrCare247 in empowering women’s health. Join hands with us to make a difference in women’s healthcare. 

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However, with the growing reliance on digital solutions, safeguarding patient information becomes a critical concern. This is where HIPAA-compliant patient access solutions play a pivotal role. In this blog post, we will explore the essential aspects of HIPAA compliance and vital considerations when selecting software vendors for data privacy and security.

Understanding HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA, enacted in 1996, aims to establish standards for the privacy and security of Protected Health Information (PHI). Its primary objective is to protect patients’ sensitive data while enabling secure information exchange among healthcare providers. HIPAA compliance encompasses all aspects of healthcare operations, including patient scheduling, intake, and telehealth technology systems.

Key Factors in Selecting HIPAA-Compliant Patient Scheduling Software

Data breaches pose significant challenges to the healthcare industry, leading to substantial financial and operational losses. Healthcare data breaches are among the most costly, and they have increased over the past few years. Selecting the right HIPAA-compliant patient access software is paramount to ensuring the security and privacy of medical information. Here are crucial factors to consider:

Data Protection Measures: A vital component of HIPAA adherence, data encryption entails converting sensitive information into an unintelligible format that necessitates an encryption key for deciphering. When choosing patient access software, verify its use of strong encryption protocols for both stored and transmitted data to thwart unauthorized access and protect patient information from breaches.

Data Backup and Restoration: In healthcare, the repercussions of data loss can be dire. Hence, it’s imperative for patient access software to establish routine data backup procedures, safeguarding patient information against hardware malfunctions or cyber breaches. Furthermore, a dependable data recovery system is vital to promptly restoring operations following any data loss incidents.

Access Management: HIPAA mandates stringent access controls to regulate who can view or manipulate patient data. Patient access software should offer role-based access controls, allowing administrators to assign varying levels of access to different users. This ensures that only authorized personnel can access sensitive patient information, minimizing the risk of data breaches caused by human error or malicious intent.

Activity Logs: HIPAA requires strict access controls to govern the individuals who can access or manage patient data. Patient access software needs to provide role-based access controls, enabling administrators to allocate different levels of access to users. This guarantees that only authorized personnel can retrieve sensitive patient information, thereby reducing the possibility of data breaches due to human error or malicious actions.

Secured Communication: Secure communication in healthcare is imperative to safeguard patient privacy. Patient access software compliant with HIPAA standards should incorporate secure messaging functionalities, enabling communication regarding appointments and patient data without compromising data security.

Ongoing Risk Evaluations: HIPAA compliance requires regular risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities and address potential threats. Your software provider should conduct these assessments regularly to proactively identify and mitigate security risks that could compromise patient data.

Staff Education: Human mistakes play a major role in data breaches, highlighting the critical need for thorough staff training on HIPAA regulations and the appropriate utilization of patient access software. Make sure your software provider provides training materials to instruct employees on software functionalities and security procedures.

Dedicated Cloud Infrastructure: Cloud-based architecture provides heightened security and privacy compared to multi-tenant environments by furnishing a dedicated environment for each client. This framework facilitates improved compliance with industry regulations such as HIPAA, ensuring a meticulously controlled and auditable environment to meet regulatory standards effectively.

Final Thoughts

Ensuring HIPAA compliance is vital for healthcare providers to maintain patient trust and data integrity. With the right scheduling software and strong security measures, providers can improve efficiency while safeguarding privacy and meeting regulations. Balancing usability and security fosters widespread adoption and empowers patients. Discover strategies for choosing and implementing HIPAA-compliant patient access software with DrCare247.

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What does HIPAA do?

HIPAA consists of five rules that regulate the use and disclosure of a person’s health information. The rules are:

The Privacy Rule

This rule protects the confidentiality of a person’s health information. It requires healthcare organizations to get a person’s permission before using or disclosing their health information.

The Security Rule

This rule protects the security of a person’s health information. It requires healthcare organizations to take steps to ensure that the information is kept confidential and secure.

The Breach Notification Rule

This rule requires healthcare organizations to notify individuals if their health information has been lost or stolen.

The Omnibus Rule:

This rule made changes to the Privacy and Security Rules. It also established new rules for business associates, which are companies that work with healthcare organizations and have access to a person’s health information.

The HITECH Act:

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act was enacted in 2009. It made changes to the Privacy and Security Rules and established new rules for business associates.

What information is protected by HIPAA?

HIPAA protects all “individually identifiable health information.” This is information that can be used to identify a person. It includes information like a person’s name, address, birth date, Social Security number, and health information.

How does HIPAA affect healthcare providers?

HIPAA affects all healthcare providers, including doctors, nurses, hospitals, and clinics. Healthcare providers must follow the rules of HIPAA when they use, disclose, or access a person’s health information.

What are the consequences of violating HIPAA?

Violating HIPAA is a serious matter. Healthcare providers who violate HIPAA can be fined, and they may lose their license to practice.

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Telemedicine can play an important role in reaching out to those who are in remote areas that are limited access to care. Let’s have a closer look at how Telemedicine could help in early detection and limit the exposure from possible infection.

The value of Telemedicine in promoting early diagnosis for coronavirus or COVID-19

Televisits help patients connecting the physician of their choices remotely from the comfort of their home with the help of their internet-enabled smart devices or personal computers anytime.

The remote visits are effective especially for common minor ailments such as flu, cough, and cold. Since the coronavirus is sharing similar symptoms as a cold and flu, Physician in the Telemedicine network could help to assess symptoms using screening questions that are specific to the recent novel coronavirus.

The Telemedicine could further help with early diagnosis if coronavirus is suspected using CDC clinical guidelines. Physicians can follow the CDC instructions and decide if the patient should take necessary testing and quarantine those suspected of exposure. They can quickly notify the local or state health departments if the results turned out to be positive.

We can further avoid the spread of potential coronavirus from people who have minimal symptoms but can be infectious through the Telemedicine remote visits.

Limiting the exposure that helps physicians on frontlines

The collective voice of public health experts around the world to prevent this deadly virus is to avoid exposure. As a core concept of the Telemedicine suggests, the patients are no need to travel from their work or home to get their consultation done. It helps patients, physicians and anyone they encounter en-route to their healthcare facility could being avoided by the possible infection due to their exposure.

Physicians can easily perform remote visits to screen their patients for illness (including coronavirus), refer the proper testing, can prescribe medications and do the follow-up as needed.

Telemedicine that could be truly customized to meet today’s healthcare challenges

The healthcare industry is often facing unexpected challenges now and then. With the help of technology, Telemedicine is once again proving increasingly helpful in fighting against any new challenges in the healthcare industry including a widespread outbreak like coronavirus or COVID-19.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic marches on unabated, and countries gradually open up, patients continue to be very apprehensive about meeting their healthcare providers in person. Social distancing protocols are still in place and will most likely completely relax only until a vaccine is created and distributed.

A few months ago, telemedicine was seen as an innovative approach to providing care for patients in remote areas. It was perceived as an easy and quick way for clinicians to keep in touch with patients, without the need to travel to a clinic. Now, regulations and insurance coverage surrounding telemedicine have relaxed, allowing it to become more accessible, even in fields like occupational, physical, and speech therapies. Today, if a patient goes into a healthcare setting for an appointment, there will be barriers to human interaction in place with masks and other PPE, as well as distancing between the provider and patient. Above all, there is an increased risk of exposure to the virus because of close proximity in waiting rooms to others who may not have been tested.

Telemedicine removes these barriers and allows a provider’s uncovered face to be seen, allowing for a more genuine human connection with the patient. This makes for improved patient safety and experience, as well as a better patient-provider relationship.

Let’s take a deeper look into the delivery of maternal care with today’s social distancing protocols. As of January 2019, only 9.3% of ob-gyn physicians saw patients virtually, being one of the least prevalent specialties utilizing virtual visits (American Medical Association, 2019). Parents are very concerned about bringing their infants into a healthcare setting that can expose the family to the virus, and there is also tension among pregnant women to come in for prenatal checkups. Many women are worried about contracting the virus through exams that require close proximity to others. This is why in the current environment, providers have made an active effort to normalize virtual visits for maternal care, allowing for much better health outcomes for mothers and children. This is also supported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), who are recommending ob-gyn providers to utilize telemedicine as much as possible.

Women who face obstetrical complications often have to travel great distances to see a specialist. Also, depending on their geographic area of residence, women will face barriers to good maternal health with the negative impact posed by social determinants of health such as income and race, as well as pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and obesity. Dr. Patrick Ramsey, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UT Health San Antonio, is emphasizing the need to become creative to deliver care to these patients. Examples of this are designing new ways to deliver tests and exams from remote locations, as well as leveraging audio call features rather than a video call. This will help address the issue of limited broadband connectivity for patients in rural areas. It is crucial that these factors are addressed in the development process of telemedicine products, especially for patients with limited access to specialized care.

Telemedicine was already on the rise prior to the pandemic, but with social distancing protocols and uncertainty about the timeline of returning to normalcy, it is being implemented in almost every healthcare organization. These clinics and health systems are now gaining valuable experience of efficiently delivering care virtually to patients. Even after social distancing protocols ease and this pandemic passes, telemedicine is on a clear trajectory to being mainstream worldwide.

Build your own telemedicine app with DrCare247 to offer better patient care!

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Remote Patient Monitoring or RPM is a method of healthcare delivery that uses connected devices to collect the patient’s data and transfers the data using the information technology. Monitoring the data received from these connected devices are helpful to assess the patient’s current condition quickly and efficiently.

Perspective towards traditional healthcare system is evolving during this post-pandemic period. The advancement in information technology especially in healthcare IT, playing a major role and has an impact in every individual. Now a days, the connected devices are everywhere. Every smartphone and wearable devices that you are using is already collecting the vitals such as your walking steps, running or jogging and other vitals.

With the high need for remote technology in delivering healthcare, the providers or the hospitals should start implementing the RPM to their existing HIMS or telehealth system. There are few notable features and benefits that you should know before getting into it.

Patient-centric design and experience

The patients are the foremost users of the technology or the software platform, next to the doctors and healthcare providers. The UI has to be simple, easy to navigate and self-explained for ease of use. Therefore, the user interface should reflect the needs, experiences, and limitations of the patients. Some of the features that can improve the user experience are as follows. 

• Simple login/sign-in process
• Upright font size, images, and icons
• No unnecessary elements or longer texts
• Reduce patient time learning to use the new device
• Offer remote translation of language
• Display relevant content 

Data management and security compliance

Ensure the safety of your patients by ensuring the security and compliances of the platform or the software you choose. The connected RPM devices are capable of transmitting the vitals such as heart rate, blood sugar level, BP, weight, SPO2, etc., Make sure the devices you choose for remote monitoring is adhere with all the compliances according to the governing law.

The data collected from these devices must be stored and managed secure HIPAA infra structure.

RPM integrated with EMR

The data your RPM device collects from your patient is a crucial part of their health record. EMR enables long-term efficient management of data. If an RPM is integrated with an EMR, it is easy for a faster and proactive patient care. The measurable data can be easily tracked with remote patient monitoring. 

Decision support module

Remote patient monitoring should support, data-driven decision-making. The collected data from these devices would enable providers to track the symptoms and plan accordingly to provide the proactive care to their patients. Ultimately, the patients will get personalized care.

Notification and alerts

The whole RPM system is relying on transferring the patient data collected via connected devices. If the RPM solution you choose is not capable of setting up the custom-rules to trigger the necessary alerts, then none of the users can be beneficial from the system.

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