Tele-Medicine During Covid-19

Tele-Medicine During COVID-19

As the COVID-19 virus break all the healthcare system, Tele-medicine is stepping up into the spotlight and helping healthcare provider organizations and caregivers better respond to the needs of Americans who have contracted the virus and Americans who need to touch base with their providers on the status of their health.

Tele-medicine is making a very positive contribution to healthcare during the pandemic, and is being used in a variety of ways. But tele health technologies do have certain limitations when it comes to treating patients during a pandemic. Further, there is a chance Tele-medicine could add to hospitals being overwhelmed, unless it’s used well. But hospitals are learning to adapt to Tele-health during a pandemic.

About Tele-medicine

Tele-medicine (also referred to as "telehealth" or "e-health") allows health care professionals to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients in remote locations using telecommunications technology. Tele-medicine allows patients in remote locations to access medical expertise quickly, efficiently and without travel.

How Tele-medicine is being used in the context of COVID-19 for common people?

During this Global pandemic, Tele-health is emerging as an effective and sustainable solution for precaution, prevention and treatment to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Tele-health is bridging the gap between people, physicians and health systems, enabling everyone, especially symptomatic patients, to stay at home and communicate with physicians through virtual channels, helping to reduce the spread of the virus to mass populations and the medical staff on the front lines, Critically, hospitals are quickly adopting Tele-health to treat quarantined patients infected with COVID-19

“In addition, the CDC is urging the public and medical staff to use Tele health solutions for non-urgent communication in an effort to reduce the pressures facing emergency rooms and clinics,” he explained. “By deploying Tele health solutions and programs, people who are suffering from other medical ailments during this time can receive care from home, without entering medical facilities, minimizing their risk of contracting the virus.”

Minimizing risk to healthcare workers

The primary care physicians are working tirelessly in the front lines at ground zero, Now they able to divide the patients into the at-risk and not-at-risk groups. Appropriate measures can then be taken to minimize the risks to healthcare workers and patients. The right actions can then be taken for the patients who have been pre-screened, saving precious time and minimizing risks of transmission to all.

Many chronic patients can from home have scheduled Tele consultations to avoid face-to-face clinic visits and hence minimize their risks of exposure to COVID-19, he added.

Limitations to Tele-health from COVID-19

Tele-medicine can be a tool for managing COVID19, However, there is one glaring disconnect that must resolve the clinical symptom's as well the other suspended OPD during this pandemic.

The basis for out-of-hospital management is testing,” he said. “The linchpin of management of a pandemic is widespread testing and conventional tele medicine today may not offer that. Perhaps a ‘crisis-based’ evolution of tele-medicine can help find local testing centers and also manage the flow of patients seeking a test.

With respect to COVID19, the data suggests that most people will have a mild infection and the clinical course will be unremarkable. In these instances, tele-medicine may not really be all that necessary.

However, for a smaller subset of higher risk patients, the clinical course may not be consistent with conventional tele-medicine,” he explained. “These patients often present with a more serious condition that results in rapid decompensation and requires hospitalization. The reality might be that for COVID19, tele-medicine as it exists now, needs to be modified to help manage early testing, diagnosis and triage for those who may require in-patient care.

Not yet equipped for Tele-medicine OPD

The most significant limitation to tele-health use in the COVID-19 response right now is that while some hospitals and large physician practices are equipped to deliver care in this way, most hospitals and private practices are not, said to go in OPD's.

Tele-medicine hasn’t traditionally been used in response to public health crises, but that is changing with COVID-19,” he said. “I’m encouraged that government and private insurance companies are making policy changes to promote its use. The CDC is calling for healthcare facilities to adopt Tele-medicine to protect patients and staff, and many large hospitals are racing to implement and scale up these capabilities at their front lines.

                                 

Actually reducing the burden of Hospitals

Actually, Tele-medicine is reducing the burden on hospitals as they deal with the spread of COVID-19 and the associated increased caseload Although some doctors are now required to dedicate time to screening patients via Tele-medicine while maintaining treatment of other patients, they would be doing that at the time of selected hours of Tele-medicine.

It’s worth noting that hospitals have varying capacities for deploying Tele-medicine right now, but those that are able to offer Tele-health services to any degree are seeing benefits Even something as basic as using the online waiting room features keeps patients from piling up in close proximity to one another while they wait for their exams in person, so that’s all proving to be a great help in flattening the curve and alleviating the overall burden on all hospitals.

How are hospitals adapting to Tele-medicine during the pandemic?

Hospitals routinely prepare for crises, but they have not really leveraged Tele-health technologies in the past so this time hospitals also adapting this practice of Tele-medicine.

As the healthcare system grapples with COVID-19, however, we see more and more hospitals adopt these technologies to limit exposure at the front lines, and to protect staff as well as other patients Hospitals that choose well will find that the benefits of Tele-health extend beyond this current public health need – because other crises will surely come.

Benefits of tele-medicine

A tele-medicine technology and services vendor, reports that healthcare is seeing a surge of direct-to-consumer tele-medicine providers operating at a large scale helping to provide care to patients who might be wondering if they need care after exhibiting potential symptoms associated with the novel corona virus.

Simultaneously we’re also seeing a rapidly increasing need for on-demand acute care via tele-medicine,” he said. “This includes ICU programs offering intensive care for the most critical patients. However, tele-triage is exploding in terms of the number of use-cases that involves determining when a patient presents in the emergency department whether they need to be issued a bed or if they can be seen in another area within the hospital in order to keep the patient safe and to reduce potential exposures.

This helps to limit providers’ exposure to the virus and other infectious diseases.

Conclusion

Tele-medicine is such a perfect, ready-made solution to addressing COVID-19 that it wouldn’t make sense not to use it, and plenty of hospitals are making efforts to grow their Tele-health services to better serve patients during this time.

Thanks for the attention  hope this article will help you all and if you all are waiting to subside all the situation of this pandemic so don't wait for ongoing O.P.D directly contact to the hospitals for tele-medicine services in their hospitals for your health concerns this is the best option during this situation stay at your home and be safe.

                      

Written By:

Priyanka Massey

Certified Infection Control Nurse

Professional Trainer

Ingenious Health Care Consultants Pvt.Ltd