Telehealth holds promise for providing treatment to outpatients with the use of virtual communication. Recent years have observed a rise in the use of telehealth especially after the spread of coronavirus (1). Many of the patients are seeking care from doctors electronically in the current pandemic. Telehealth prevails in the current world scenario where key concerns are social distancing, prevention of spreading the virus, and healthcare workers’ protection (2).
According to a study Telehealth adoption has been expanding since 2014. It is observed that factors like health policy, infrastructure present for providing telehealth, improvements in reimbursement models, workflow restructuring, and the organizational efforts to move to electronic health records play influential roles in adoption of this idea (3). Telehealth and its effectiveness have remarkable importance in the recent era (4). Telehealth helps to expedite the patient’s cure with major improvements like reducing wait time, faster treatments, and comprehensive services. There is also a decrease in visits and admissions in hospitals and hospitalization length (5). The interventions provided to patients through telehealth appear similar to the care delivered in-person (6).
TotalCare makes the process easier. It has great features which can help the patients in multiple ways. They can upload the lab reports and other PDF documents that the doctor requests and can also view the assessment documents the doctors posts. They can chat with their clinicians whenever they have any kind of issues. The app is very simple to use and can be easily adapted. TotalCare is also HIPAA compliant and all of the patient information is safe with TotalCare.
References
1. Wosik J, Fudim M, Cameron B, Gellad ZF, Cho A, Phinney D, et al. Telehealth transformation: COVID-19 and the rise of virtual care. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2020 Jun 1;27(6):957–62.
2. Galewitz P. Telemedicine Surges, Fueled By Coronavirus Fears And Shift In Payment Rules [Internet]. Kaiser Health News. 2020 [cited 2021 Jan 4]. Available from: https://khn.org/news/telemedicine-surges-fueled-by-coronavirus-fears-and-shift-in-payment -rules/
3. Ranganathan C, Balaji S. Key Factors Affecting the Adoption of Telemedicine by Ambulatory Clinics: Insights from a Statewide Survey. Telemedicine and e-Health. 2019 Mar 15;26(2):218–25.
4. Galiero R, Pafundi PC, Nevola R, Rinaldi L, Acierno C, Caturano A, et al. The Importance of Telemedicine during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Focus on Diabetic Retinopathy [Internet]. Vol. 2020, Journal of Diabetes Research. Hindawi; 2020 [cited 2021 Jan 5]. p. e9036847. Available from: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jdr/2020/9036847/
5. Seehusen DA, Azrak A. The Effectiveness of Outpatient Telehealth Consultations. AFP. 2019 Nov 1;100(9):575–7.
6. Shigekawa E, Fix M, Corbett G, Roby D, Coffman J. The Current State Of Telehealth Evidence: A Rapid Review. Health Affairs. 2018 Dec 1;37:1975–82.