Maximizing Efficiency and Quality of Care: The Impact of Telehealth Solution Providers

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With telehealth options, providing its employees with the healthcare they need is easier than ever. However, forward-thinking companies must consider key points before implementing these options. For instance, diabetic patients in rural areas might need to commute to the nearest city to meet with a specialist like an endocrinologist or nutritionist. Real-time telehealth appointments via video conferencing can help eliminate that hassle.

Patient Education

Many healthcare organizations have used telehealth to improve efficiency. For example, a store-and-forward telehealth platform can gather demographic and health data from a patient’s visits or medical tests and send it to a third party for evaluation, such as a specialist physician or laboratory technician. This system reduces the number of office visits needed, saving on medical supplies and other resources. Another example is a remote monitoring system that allows patients to monitor their vital signs, reducing the need for nurses to check them in person.

Similarly, telehealth solutions allow patients to interact with their providers through videoconferencing or text messaging. This increases engagement and allows for faster, more comprehensive care. Additionally, telehealth solutions can provide patients with educational content that helps them understand their symptoms and treatment. This can reduce patient anxiety, which in turn can lead to better clinical outcomes.

However, implementing telehealth systems can be difficult for hospitals in developing countries or LMICs. They may need more technical or financial infrastructure to support telehealth. To overcome this obstacle, a telehealth solution provider has worked with hospitals to develop customized and tailored solutions that work with the country’s specific. This can accelerate telehealth implementation during pandemics and enable hospitals to leverage their existing infrastructure for immediate benefits while working toward long-term infrastructure development.

Patient Engagement

When patients feel fully engaged, they are more likely to understand their care options and responsibilities. With this increased knowledge, they are more confident that their visits will be valuable and that their healthcare providers hear their voices. This reduced uncertainty can help them avoid excessive appointments and ensure they follow through on any recommended care requirements.

Engaged patients are also more likely to feel comfortable enough to ask key questions about their care and treatment, which can improve overall experience. Personalized engagement strategies are more likely to resonate with the patient, so providers of telehealth solutions need to understand each patient’s demographics, psychographics and social determinants of health (SDoH) when creating engagement initiatives.

A multidisciplinary team must be established with research and clinical practice community representatives to promote engagement and empower the patient. A concept map can provide a common communication basis that enhances understanding and reduces miscommunication between participants, leading to improved engagement in patient-centered research.

Patient Monitoring

As COVID-19 continues to ebb and flow, healthcare organizations are doing more with less than ever. Fortunately, telehealth technologies can help streamline processes to reduce clinicians’ time on administrative tasks.

Using remote patient monitoring to monitor patients in real-time can reduce the need for in-person visits, saving both the patient and the provider money. Patients avoid the costs of travel, parking and childcare to and from appointments, while providers cut down on overhead. Additionally, offering RPM can help prevent appointment breaches by providing patients with a convenient way to follow up on their health parameters without a costly trip to the office.

However, the ability to use telehealth solutions for patient monitoring also means that patients must be tech-savvy and have access to a stable internet connection and wearable device that they can easily configure and operate. This can challenge some populations, especially those older and needing more digital literacy.37

Developing countries or LMICs with flourishing digital-health private sectors and strong digital foundations can prioritize telehealth implementation at the national level to attract private-sector investment and promote user adoption. They can also enact relevant legislation and policies to facilitate the growth of the telehealth industry. This will ensure the industry stays competitive and sustainable in the long term.

Patient Collaboration

The most common benefits of telehealth that hospital administrators report are reduced use of medical supplies and human resources. For example, a study found that implementing a vital sign telemetry system decreased the need for nurses to check patients’ vital signs in person, reducing the consumption of personal protective equipment35.

Another way telehealth can save costs is through interprofessional team collaboration. This allows patients to be seen by multiple healthcare professionals simultaneously, which results in better treatment planning, increased efficiency and more accurate diagnoses.

However, patients must be educated on how to use telehealth solutions to maximize these advantages. This includes clear communication about the process and what to expect during virtual visits and user-friendly platforms that are easy to navigate. The more comfortable patients feel using a telehealth platform, the more likely they will engage with it.

Additionally, patients should be provided with opportunities to reschedule their appointments or cancel them if they are unavailable at the time of the appointment. This can be done by sending them templated HIPAA-compliant text messages to protect their privacy. This can allow them to find a new time that works for them and still provide the same benefit to the medical practice.