While employers are increasingly offering telemedicine services to employees, employees are slow to use these services.
Currently, about 70 percent of employers offer telehealth services to employees, and 90 percent of employers plan to make them available to employees in 2017, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health. However, just 3 percent of employees used those services in the first half of 2016, reports Chicago Tribune.
Here are three reasons why employees haven't embraced telemedicine full force, according to the report.
1. Liza Mazur, a partner at Chicago-based law firm McDermott Will & Emery told Chicago Tribune many employees just don't know that telemedicine is available to them. "They need to be educated on its existence," she said in the report.
2. Some employees wonder about the accuracy and quality of being treated virtually. The Tribune cites a study published in JAMA Dermatology this May that found significant gaps in care quality and accuracy with teledermatology consultations, including missed diagnoses and improper prescribed treatments.
3. Jack Resneck, MD, a co-author of the JAMA Dermatology study, told Chicago Tribune he is concerned such services don't allow patients to pick their providers, and added that physicians treating patients via telemedicine may not always have access to patients' medical records or a way to communicate with the patient's normal physicians.
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