The Pros and Cons of Telemedicine
Telemedicine is a recent technology, which possesses the prospects to alter the face of medicine. In short, it permits patients to contact with physicians through telecommunications technology such as video chatting and phone calling. Still, even with a lot of obvious benefits, telemedicine seems to be gradual catching on in the field of healthcare.
Telemedicine is the distant delivery of health care services like health consultations and assessments, over the infrastructure of telemedicine. It lets the providers to check, diagnose and treat people without the requirement for a direct meeting. It can be categorized into three key methods like remote patient checking, interactive telemedicine and store and forward medicine. Technology like video meeting and transmission of photos are regarded part of telehealth and telemedicine. Here is a look at the telemedicine pros and cons.
Pros:
1. Convenient
Telemedicine assist remove the requirement for a visit to the doctor’s clinic when a direct meeting is not required. If you want to follow up with the physicians regarding a condition process such as high blood pressure or diabetes, then a video chat or a phone call session to talk about lifestyle or medication adjustments could be over than enough. Or if you just want to follow up with the physicians after a lab checking or a diagnostic examination, telemedicine can remove the difficulty from an in individual appointment.
2. Cheap
These kinds of appointments also occur to be affordable, saving time in the middle of meetings and letting doctors to look more patients. On the whole, this could be effective to decrease the expenses of health care for sufferers. It is even cost effective to visit with a doctor over the phone or online than it is to create a drive a vehicle to physician clinic.
3. Maintain simple flu’s and colds out of the clinic
Several times a service provider can diagnose an illness like a flu or seasonal cold through video with no issue. Keeping patients with small sicknesses out of the clinic offer providers lot of time to look patients whose problems can be taken care well off in person. These are some of the benefits of telemedicine for doctors. Keeping minor illness patients in the house also makes them from spreading bacteria or germs around the clinic, that is an excellent advantages for other patients, however employees also. Moreover, who needs to leave the residence when struggling with cold or flu.
4. Cheaper for providers and patients
Looking patients virtually refer that there is no requirement for the expenses of the facility. Most of the eVisits are a flat charge more or less forty dollar per visit without any coverage and if the insurance carrier of the patient does offer coverage for eVisits, they simply pay the usual copay. This way let for a simpler way of billing because the patient understands in advance what they will be paying the amount and the expenses can be paid on the internet.
5. Rural area patients
Those in rural areas frequently do not get access to the similar quality of care like patients who stay in urban areas. Visiting a doctor through video shows that the physician can be located at any place, hence patients can consider highly rated general doctors or specialists who they did not get access because of the place.
Cons:
1. Needs additional training
Healthcare facilities which do provide telemedicine choices for patients should spend excess money and time training the health care experts to avail this technology needed for telemedicine. It could need a full reconstructing of the IT employee and it could show extra staffing needs, make difficult the problem of healthcare recruitment.
2. Decrease care continuity
Number of telemedicine events keeps patients with random physicians and this show reduced continuity of care. Health care professionals who see the patients might even be compelled to take conclusions when possess restricted access to the patient's full medical history. In this implication, telemedicine could result in reduced quality of care. This is one of the disadvantages of telemedicine could overturn if more physicians squeeze telemedicine events in the training.
3. Licensing problems
Some states may need providers who train telemedicine across state contain a proper license in the state the patient is located.
4. Technological limitations
Even with the recent new programs in telemedicine technology, it still contains its limitations. Broadband connections cannot be good, video chatting devices can malfunction and visibility can be less than perfect. This is a big limitation of telemedicine can create in person visits yet very much the perfection.
5. Not often covered by insurance
When the whole expenses of the doctor's clinic are affordable, large number of insurance firms yet do not totally cover telehealth visits. Due to this reason, plenty of patients still look for seeing the provider in person even if it is not needed since there is a lower out purse charge.
Conclusion
Telemedicine is a new concept, and it grows with great speed. With fast advances in technology, it’s possible that it will turn out to be easier and widely approved in the future days. The telemedicine will want to solve some management hindrance, like the restrictions placed on the training, licensing needs and reimbursement policies.