The Pros And Cons Of Telehealth

Advancements in technology have made it possible for people to access medical information, communicate with their doctor, manage and track diseases, seek help, and maintain anonymity. Technology has facilitated the tracking of medical information, for example, Kaiser Permanente uses a computerized system to store and track patient information. Any doctor in a

Over the past decade, virtually every major industry invested heavily in computerization. The heath care industry was no exception to the rise in the use of technology. These technologies are starting to allow health care practitioners to offer faster, and more efficient patient care than ever before. No doubt this is the right direction we expect health care to follow.

Although telehealth cannot replace physical checkups, however, doctor visits are no longer mandatory. There are many benefits in using telehealth such as seeing your doctor over the phone or via internet. This allows a one on one session, where a visit is more focused on the patient instead of rushing because of time. This will also save the patient time and money by not paying for gas

Advantages: With Telehealth, people are able to have consultation with their health care provider at home/office. This is convenience for those patients with physical disability or elderlies. This also makes their family member’s life easier as they do not need to take an off in order to bring the patient to hospital. It is cheaper to have consultation with doctors through Telehealth compare to visit the doctor personally. This would also reduce travel expenses. Telehealth helps to save time as patients do not need to spent time on traveling and waiting for their turn to have consultation.

Most advances of telehealth in the medical field have taken place in the last twenty to thirty years. A great progression of telehealth was the introduction of telemedicine, which include teleradiology and telepathology. As further fields joined the telemedicine platform, telehealth use facilitated even more healthcare providers to retrieve information regarding their patients, irrespective of the distances between themselves and the patients, and in settings other than traditional healthcare locations. Quick transmissions, clearer imaging, and precise duplication of data from distant sites to a central center, was only attained after decades spent perfecting the technology. The outcomes of telehealth interactions today have aided to assure that professionals can duplicate the normal clinical communications in all specialties notwithstanding the separation gap involved in the interaction, whether operating off location or directly with patients (McGonigle and Mastrian, 2015, p. 316-317).

The use of technology will enable patients to track important health information. This can be useful for patients changing primary care providers, meaning the redundant attempts to provide physician offices with past medical history can be eliminated. A discussion of extensive implementation of Electronics Health Records (EHR’s) to create a service for patients is found on HealthIT.gov (Health IT, 2014). As of now only a select few organizations include this service technology and it is called “Blue Button.” This service allows patients to retrieve all medical records through the internet rather than having to visit the medical records office at a local facility. With the inclusion of this service, a broad variety of services including a system wide online patient portal is a possibility to allow patients the ability to connect mobile health monitoring devices, check current prescriptions, and review important blood test results (Health IT, 2014). These tools can be utilized by patients to track and take preventative actions on their health status, but unfortunately not every healthcare organization offers this to its patients. If the inclusion of this type of service becomes a standard in care, patients will gain access to their health records and be able to utilize them through a more convenient effort no matter which provider is seen.

One advantage of using telehealth for ones health care needs is the fact that patients do not need to have a primary care provider. In the United States alone, one-quarter of patients do not have complete access to a primary care provider or do not have one at all (Polinski, Barker, Gagliano, Sussman, Brennan, & Shrank, 2016) . With how busy American’s are today, have convenient and accessible care can be difficult. Telehealth will ease the patients access to care. Telehealth allows healthcare professionals to provide medical services at a distance, all while using video imaging and other technology just as they would in an office setting. Recent studies have found that the quality of

The two health information technologies I have explored are Electronic health records and Telehealth. The objective of electronic health records is to make health care harmless and more efficient by providing health professionals and patients comparable information to inform decision making, to benefit precautionary care and reduce duplication difficulty. Some significant things about EHRs it provides clinical decision advantages, physicians and nurses are allowed to enter data about their patients well-being, and patients able to get a copy of their medical records on demand, also those data can share between facilities and organizations. Secondly, an electronic health record should keep a record of every training a physician gives to a patient

In terms of convenience for example, patients that work during the day may find it difficult to put aside the time to go visit their doctor. The process of telehealth allows for a quick doctor’s visit via phone, web chat, video, etc. that can very easily be done over a lunch break. This is especially convenient for patients who have a doctor they have been seeing for years and are simply looking for a follow-up on a prescription or an update on their diagnosis (Harper 1).

Telehealth, which is defined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as “The use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support remote clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration” (Stowe & Harding 2010). Telehealth has the capability of collaborating those healthcare professionals to take advantage of healthcare services among several of settings as well as distances (Stowe & Harding 2010). This report would start from the effectiveness of telehealth and possible disadvantages. Some evaluation for integrating personal experience and discussion about whether telehealth is a viable alternative to face-to-face practice would also be

The use of Telehealth technology in the health care delivery has brought many benefits as to the disadvantages. One of the considerable advantages influenced by the Telehealth technology is the improvement in health service delivery sector (Tuerk & Shore, 2014). Nagel et al. (2015) observed that telehealth technology facilitates nurse-patient consultation hence narrowing the link between a nurse and patient

Telemedicine is the use of videoconferencing (Oliveira et al., 2012). It is reported that135, 000 telemedicine usages were evident between 2000 and 2010 (Oliveira et al., 2012). These uses included “teleconsultations, teleradiology (computerized tomography and x-rays), ultrasound telemedicine, and telepathology” (Oliveira et al., 2012, p. 30). A hospital consultant and a general practitioner are both present during the teleconsultations. Electronic patient records are easily accessible. Diagnostic procedures can be requested during teleconferencing. Upon diagnostic results, treatments are formulated. As a precautionary measure, when proper diagnosis is not possible remotely, then the patient must see the practitioner in the office. This method is good for the elderly population because it provides access to health care while they reside in a familiar environment such as their homes. It is reported this method benefits patients and practitioners (Oliveira et al., 2012). Patients experience reductions in wait times, and costs associated with travel as well as improvement in referral services. Practitioners gain more training. The down side to this method is that it has been noted to lead to “duplication of services” (Oliveira et al., 2012, p.35). Some

In this chapter, we provide the context of current state-of-the-art, its applications, and challenges on the current telehealth research as shown in Figure

In terms of clinical outcomes the Video Telehealth has certainly enhanced the quality of clinical care. Improved communication with nurses and doctors were organised to maximize the patient’s

The changes in healthcare have been excitingly revolutionary and act as a very large gate into the possibilities of the future for health services. The way that hospitals store their data has changed monumentally. This change allows for faster accessibility to health information of a patient and even allows for a patient to access their own health records if they want to. This change in speed is very different from the old paper records of the past, and the more things that health services moves on to a technological database, the safer the information is and the faster it can be obtained. Another thing that all this information being quickly available is that healthcare is receivable almost anywhere in this day and age. With all this freedom, some people in the healthcare