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Here, medical professionals collaborate with patients to create a personalized treatment plan that is suited to their requirements. To do this, it is necessary to give the patient the attention they deserve, involve them in decision-making, and provide them with the knowledge and instruction they need to comprehend their condition and the options that are accessible to them.  The goal is to enhance overall patient care quality, satisfaction, and outcomes by placing patients at the center of the healthcare system and acknowledging that they are the most significant stakeholder in their own health.

Some of the fundamental principles of a patient-centric strategy in healthcare

1.  Respect for patient autonomy and decision-making: Providing patients with information to involve them in decisions related to their care.

2. Holistic care: Addressing a patient’s emotional, social, and psychological needs in addition to their physical health.

3. Patient engagement: Actively involving patients in their treatment and motivating them to take charge of their own health management.

4. Personalized care: Adjusting the course of treatment based on the needs and preferences of each patient.

5. Continuity of care: Ensuring patients receive consistent care over time, regardless of the place for their medical care.

Why is a Patient-Centric Approach Important in Telemedicine?

In telemedicine, a patient-centric approach is crucial because it ensures that patients get the care that is personalized to their individual requirements. With telemedicine, healthcare professionals can communicate with patients from any location in the world, making it possible for patients to obtain more efficient care.

For example, patients can interact virtually with their healthcare practitioner from the convenience of their homes or from anywhere, eliminating the need for travel and minimizing time away from work or family. Additionally, telemedicine allows flexible scheduling, which can be particularly helpful for patients with demanding work or family schedules. Healthcare professionals can enhance patient satisfaction, improve patient engagement, and ultimately deliver better care by using a patient-centric approach in telemedicine. The objective is to provide patients with a healthcare experience that is more convenient, open to them, and tailored to them, which will ultimately result in better health results.

Six reasons why a patient-centric approach is important in telemedicine

Improves Patient Satisfaction

Ensuring patient satisfaction is a fundamental criterion of success in telemedicine. By placing the patient first, healthcare providers can ensure that patients feel valued, and heard and that their needs are being met. As a result, patients are more likely to be satisfied and keep utilizing telemedicine services in the future.

Increases Patient Engagement

Care providers can provide patients with the necessary information, address their concerns and questions, and include them in their own care to increase their likelihood of adhering to treatment and advice. This approach promotes a sense of ownership and empowerment in the patient, which leads to improved healthcare outcomes.

Improves Communication

Effective communication is essential to providing quality healthcare, and telemedicine is no exception. Improve communication between patients and providers by ensuring that patients understand their conditions, treatments, and what to expect from telemedicine services. This can help reduce misunderstandings and improve patient-provider trust.

Increased Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness

Telemedicine has the potential to reduce healthcare costs and increase efficiency with a patient-centric approach. By supplying more personalized care that considers the patient’s needs and goals, telemedicine can reduce unnecessary healthcare utilization and costs. It can also improve efficiency by reducing wait times, travel time, and administrative tasks, which can increase the capacity of the healthcare system.

Enhances the Quality of Care

Healthcare providers may ensure that patients receive the treatment they require when they need it, and in the most comfortable way for them by tailoring care to match their needs and preferences. This can aid in enhancing health outcomes, cutting expenses, and raising the overall effectiveness of telemedicine services.

Fosters Loyalty and Trust

Patients are more likely to trust and stay loyal to their healthcare practitioner when they feel heard and supported. Due to this, they are likely to choose telemedicine and will frequently visit the same healthcare practitioner in the future, which results in long-term relationships and higher patient retention rates.

So, a patient-centric approach in telemedicine is vital to improving patient care. It involves considering the patient’s needs, preferences, values, and beliefs when making decisions about their care. By indulging patients in the healthcare process, providers can improve patient satisfaction, health outcomes, and patient engagement, as well as reduce healthcare costs.

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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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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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