TotalCare helps patients manage their chronic diseases by the use of provider-patient communication using a single telemedicine platform. Chronic diseases cost Americans billions of dollars every year. They are also the nation’s reason for its spending of $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenses. Six in ten adults in America have a chronic disease and four in ten adults have two or more chronic diseases. Chronic diseases are costly issues – emotionally, physically, and financially for Americans. TotalCare wants to help patients gain the tools to manage their chronic disease or chronic diseases and create a healthy lifestyle.
Patients who use TotalCare can self-manage their chronic diseases. The patients’ provider assigns them the tasks of checking their temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respirations, blood glucose, blood oxygen saturation level (SPO2), weight and mood. Patients can record their vitals on a single platform and a graphical view of the vitals is created. A graphical view of the vitals shows the patients trends so that they can make behavior changes and the provider can see these changes of behavior in the patients’ future results. The provider sees the vitals, and gives instructions on what to do moving forward in managing the chronic disease or chronic diseases. Self-management of chronic diseases reduces the patients’ chance of hospitalization.
Patients can communicate with their provider without visiting the doctor’s office. There is no prerequisite for using TotalCare, all a patient needs is a smartphone, tablet, or a computer. Patients an schedule and conduct a virtual call at their convenience. Patients do not have to worry about waiting in a doctor’s office or traveling long distances to get there. Patients can add their family members to the virtual call. The patients’ family members do not have to take time off of work to accompany their loved ones to the doctor’s office. The average time for an appointment in the doctor’s office is 2 hours. An annual virtual visit with a provider using TotalCare is 7-15 minutes. TotalCare is not a replacement for a patient’s in-person appointment with a doctor but allows for virtual care when an in-office visit is not warranted or needed. Telemedicine is the stepping stone on the path to better health. It alleviates patients of stress concerning wait times and traveling long distances to access healthcare. It also alleviates providers of the stress of limiting their own personal time to help their patients and provide them with tools for a healthy lifestyle. Telemedicine adds better management skills that are useful in patients’ lives – more touch points are created with the physician. Telemedicine encourages patients to create a better lifestyle for themselves, which is physically and emotionally rewarding and reduces the problem of chronic diseases and their financial burdens.
References
“Health and Economic Cots of Chronic Diseases.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 May 2022, Accessed 21 June 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/index.htm.
“Total Care for Patient.” Total Care, Accessed 21 June 2022. https://totalcaretelemed.com/patient/home.