5 Reasons Why Every Hospital Should Offer Telemedicine Solutions To Their Patients

With the current wave of digital technology sweeping across almost all, if not every aspect of human life and endeavors, it is apparently clear and quite indisputable that the 21^st century is a generation for sophisticated technological breakthroughs. Every sector of human activities today is experiencing a fair share of the technology wave.

The health care sector is not left out and the modern digital technology rocking the industry now is the telemedicine technology.

As a health worker, if your healthcare organization does not have a solid structure or plan for good telemedicine systems yet, then you are missing out. According to a survey cited in a post by evisit.com, about 90% of studied health care workers confess to working currently to develop a telemedicine program. These statistics go to show that even beyond being just a trend, the telemedicine technology has become a smart strategy for health systems who wish to provide their patients with the best and fastest available care. Telemedicine is listed the by the folks at Digital Authority as one of the technologies to watch out for in the health industry.

Interest in the technology of telemedicine among healthcare organizations have skyrocketed in recent times as a lot of the most prestigious hospitals in America and the world at large have embraced the technology for quite a number of good reasons. Here are some of them:

It Improves Profitability For Your Hospital

In recent times, it has become very necessary for hospitals to reduce medical costs, especially those that are now Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) or those that are in the process of becoming one. These institutions have a mandate to reduce medical costs for patients as much as the mandate to enhance patient care.

Implementing telemedicine helps hospitals to reduce medical costs and still improve their profitability at the same time by creating a possibility for health workers to actually see and attend to more patients in much more less time via the aid of information and telecommunication technologies, thereby helping to improve staff utilization.

Telemedicine helps to give patients access to crucial health services using technologies like remote monitoring, video conferencing, wireless communications, electronic results and other Information and Communication Technologies. Helping to remove potential barriers to adequate care for patients and also increase access to healthcare workers, ultimately reducing medical costs for patients and increasing profit for the hospitals.

It Helps To Reduce Readmission Rates For Hospitals

Having a high readmission rate is often disturbing to hospitals not just because of the financial penalties it might attract but also because it goes to signify that there is a lack in the efficiency of effective patient care management. Little wonder why most hospital systems are always on the drive to keep their readmission rate as low as possible.

When a possibility is created for health workers to remotely access their patients, readmission rates of hospitals is going to drastically reduce seeing that there is minimal need to travel down to the hospitals again when you can easily access the health workers from your place. This is exactly the role played by telemedicine in helping to keep hospital readmission rates down.

According to a report by the Home Care Association of New York (HCA), telemedicine intervention has been examined across five healthcare facilities in people who are suffering from hearth failure, pneumonia, and COPD. The results show average readmission decreases that range from 26% to 7%.

By creating an opportunity for easier patient follow-ups telemedicine helps in detecting and preventing further problems before they lead to yet another expensive stay in the hospital.

It Facilitates Better Post-Operation Follow-Ups

Just as have been testified by many orthopedic surgeons, surgical wounds can be spotted in as less as 30 seconds with telemedicine, unlike the conventional in-person patient appointments which take a longer time. This means, according to a recent study, that more time is saved for the surgeons in the OR and traveling and patients’ waiting time will be reduced significantly too.

Because of this, a lot of surgeons have resulted to using telemedicine in conducting post operation follow-ups for their patients, and it has proven to be very beneficial and much more effective and less time consuming too.

It Helps To Retain Old Patients And Attract New Ones

According to HealthcareWeekly, another very important reason why hospitals need to embrace and implement telemedicine is because it has the capacity to help retain patients, and not just that, it can also help to attract new patients.

There is a need for hospitals to keep both new and existing customers in a network and also to ensure that all revenues are optimally captured. The telemedicine experience with customers can help your hospital to do just that seeing that patients are most times very highly satisfied after the experience. This alone will most probably keep them in the network and invite their family and friends in the need to join too.

It Encourages Better Medication Adherence

One major problem health systems have a lot of times is inadequate adherence to medications by patients, and this isn’t a good thing as patients are very likely to find themselves right back in your hospital with the same ailments if they fail to adequately follow their prescribed treatment plans. Quite a number of people are seeking alternative recovery options out of medication. These options may be really harmful to the state of their wellbeing, presenting them with even more complications

With telemedicine, however, this problem can be effectively managed to a large extent as physicians can easily through video visits do a follow up and check-in to see how their patients are faring with their prescriptions and how well they are responding to treatment from time to time instead of having to do a full in-person visit.
This article comes from JGBilling, a Chicago-based medical billing company