How Covid-19 Accelerated Virtual Care & Telehealth

When Covid19 hit, every industry was greatly affected. Many adaptations needed to be made to keep the world functioning at some level. One of the methods of doing this was by incorporating technology into everything we did. Banks started moving entirely online, online ordering for groceries spiked, and technology even had a significant impact on the healthcare industry. Below, we will look at how Covid19 accelerated virtual care and telehealth, as featured in an article on the Harvard Business Review .

Virtual Care

As patients continued to need medical care, they started moving towards telehealth to keep in touch with their doctors. According to the article above, physicians saw their telehealth visits increase from a factor of 50 to 175. As virtual care started to become the new normal, many patients have come to expect this way of doctoring indefinitely. There are no lines, and you do not even need to leave the comfort of your own home. However, there are some circumstances where it is necessary to see a care provider in person. The new telehealth culture has put into question the idea of delivering care in the right setting. For example, focusing on value-based care means rightfully shifting some emergency room occurrences to a more fitting doctor’s office and addressing chronic pain patients through home-based measures. The goal is to create a better patient experience and enhance the system itself.

Financial Health

Healthcare systems began to lose money when Covid19 was at its peak. Many areas were exposed where more money should have been invested before the pandemic. Health systems are not attempting to move towards more capitation reimbursement models to support the financial sting. Some areas that need more investments include analytics that enable physicians to examine, remote patient monitoring, registries of patients with chronic diseases, and support for care managers.

Making Features of Crisis Management Permanent

The pandemic has caused healthcare systems to increase their speed in decision-making to cope with the urgency of the new challenges. This has also led to rapid experimentation and new ways of managing operational and clinical processes. The advances in decision-making and urgency in processes should not be slowed once the pandemic comes to a halt. Acceleration in crisis management is essential to save more lives and find out the root causes of health issues quicker for patients.

Originally published at https://hazenmirts.co.