The Current COVID-19 Pandemic And The Future Of Telemedicine – 2022
COVID-19 has put enormous strain on healthcare systems and care delivery. Medical assistance programs and services are being redesigned to ensure continuity of care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the utilization of Telemedicine increased as individuals and healthcare providers explored safer methods to connect and deliver care services without interruption. The following variables permitted this necessary step-change: 1) A growing propensity among individuals to use telemedicine services 2) Providers showed a greater inclination to employ telemedicine 3) Regulatory reimbursement
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During the pandemic, Telemedicine provided a gateway to the care delivery system, and it now provides an opportunity to revolutionize virtual and hybrid virtual/in-person effective interventions, with the objective of improving healthcare access, efficiency, cost, and availability.
Telehealth is a broader definition of Telemedicine that includes technologies used to accumulate and disseminate patient data, such as telephones, email, and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) gadgets, with the objective of delivering information and patient education or auxiliary medical assistance. Telehealth has been evolving constantly over the last several decades. However, regulations and financial issues have kept it from assimilating into the healthcare system. During the ongoing pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) have increased access to telehealth services. The benefits of telemedicine include cost-effectiveness, ability to broaden access for specialized treatment options, and potential to help reduce the future physician shortage. In the last two years, Tele-Triage, which includes remotely screening patients to assess the patient's state and the care required, has greatly aided care professionals in their care delivery. In addition to assisting with triage, use of the telemedicine in medical emergencies has had beneficial consequences, including the quick deployment of huge groups of healthcare personnel and the provision of services when nearby hospitals and healthcare clinics are unable to fulfill demand. New ways of triaging within Telemedicine have arisen as a result of growing utilization. For instance, automated logic flows, often known as bots, can route moderate and high-risk individuals to caregiver triage services while also enabling virtual video consultations with clinicians to bypass in-person meetings. Incorporate Virtual Health into Care Delivery Strategy Considering the massive shocks to healthcare professionals, payers are rethinking their participation in healthcare settings, whether it is through ownership of care delivery resources, value-based procurement, or so forth. Considering virtual health choices (such as portals, digital-first practitioners, etc.) as a significant component of this strategy Incorporate virtual health into your care delivery strategy. To support virtual care, it is critical to enhancing caregiver staff capabilities and incentive programs. Similarly, when contracting with payers for risk models to manage chronic patients, measuring clinical outcomes to estimate the value of virtual care includes the potential value from telemedicine.