Telemedicine is growing rapidly. The global telehealth market is expected to more than triple over the next seven years, reaching upwards of $19.5 billion.
And yet, there is confusion around telemedicine and its adoption. Telemedicine (or telehealth, as it’s also called) is often thought of as just direct-to-consumer virtual doctor visits, and so deemed as a failure to take off fully as adoption in the consumer market has been tepid. A survey by a telehealth provider last year found that 82 percent of U.S. consumers responded that they do not use telehealth. This shows just how unaware consumers are about what telehealth really means and the many ways it impacts their healthcare. It’s time to do a little mythbusting.
Telemedicine isn’t just when you FaceTime with a doctor or nurse practioner from the comfort of your home or office. It is an integral part of the entire healthcare ecosystem. In fact, over 90 percent of healthcare executives say they are expanding or developing telemedicine services. You’ve probably already adopted telemedicine without realizing it.
Here are just four ways telemedicine is touching your everyday care.
Myth 1: Telemedicine is a Video Call Between Me and My Physician From Home or Work (B2C)
Physician to Physician Consults (B2B2C)
One of the largest behind-the-scenes benefits of telemedicine is consultations between providers who may be great distances apart or even just a town over. Using video, doctors can review test results and symptoms together in real time and get second opinions from specialists.
There are “medical deserts” throughout our country where certain communities do not have access to the specialist care they need. This results in having to travel farther (sometimes hundreds of miles) to a facility where the patient can be seen by a qualified physician. While largely considered a rural medicine issue, these medical deserts exist even in some of our nations biggest cities where community wealth (payor mix), commute (distance) and other factors influence a hospitals ability to retain specialists.
In these cases, Hospital-to-hospital telemedicine is used during in-person visits. Telehealth platforms like Cloudbreak connect hospitals and ERs across the country instantly to specialists and, in some instances, can literally be the difference between life and death. For example, smaller ‘spoke’ hospitals that are not Stroke-Certified often use telestroke services to connect with specialists elsewhere to advise on-site providers when to administer tPA, the lifesaving protein that dissolves blood clots and restores blood flow to the brain. Tele-stroke physicians can remotely diagnose the patient using high definition pan tilt zoom cameras and interviewing the patient and local provider. This is an example of a crucial telemedicine service when ‘time is brain’ allowing a patient to receive critical services while remaining in their community where their support network has the best chance of assisting in their recovery.
These virtual collaborations mean more wholistic care for patients. The HIPAA-compliant secured telemedicine platform means safety for the patient’s medical records and data.
Myth #2: All of My Physician Team is Local When I am in the Hospital
Diagnostics
Remember when you used to have to drive to a medical imaging center to get an MRI or X-ray done and then wait days or even weeks until the scans were sent to your doctor for review and you were called with the results? Now, your doctor is most likely reading your test results in real time on a screen from their office while you’re across town in the scanner. Telehealth and video enable quicker diagnostics and therefore quicker medical action to get you healthy again.
Tele-radiology was one of the first enterprise telemedicine solutions to gain broad adoption. It enabled radiology groups to significantly enhance their ability to support on-site radiology teams with specialty reads from a central location and also improve the ability to cover difficult overnight and holiday shifts with international teams of physicians carrying the load.
Myth #3: Telemedicine is a Video Encounter Only
According to the American Telemedicine Association the definition of telemedicine is “the remote delivery of health care services and clinical information using telecommunications technology.” This is a much broader definition than the general public typically gives credit. Speaking with your provider over the phone, via text, through an email and beyond are all considered telemedicine. In 2016, Kaiser Permanente announced they were performing the majority of their visits via telemedicine and the number has only grown since then.
Below are some other means of telemedicine we may take for granted:
Patient portals and Integrated EMRs
Gone are the days of having to go to each doctor to collect paper copies of your health charts to take to a different doctor or specialist; records are now interactive and collaborative – even allowing you to access your data on a smartphone or personal computer.
Traditional health systems have been known to be siloed which has been reflected in disconnected patient charts. Today, telehealth enables complete integration of electronic medical records (EMRs) allowing collaboration between a variety of healthcare stakeholders including doctors, nurses, specialists, pharmacists and, most importantly, patients.
Through portals, patients can securely access their personal health information 24 hours a day from anywhere with an internet connection. Often these portals also allow patients to message their doctors securely, request prescription refills, schedule appointments, check insurance benefits and coverage and even view educational materials. Implementing patient portals can improve patient engagement and ownership over their health and therefore improve the quality of patient care.
Wearables and Health Apps
According to eMarketer, over 80 million Americans use a wearable device. Fitbits and Apple Watches that remotely monitor vital signs, symptoms and fitness activities and can use Bluetooth to report back to physicians or store data in a health tracking app fall under the mobile health (mHealth) umbrella, a type of telehealth.
The new Apple Watch equipped with an ECG monitor is a huge leap for telemedicine and mHealth. With powerful healthcare technology now available over-the-counter to consumers, many people in the healthcare industry are excited to see how patient engagement will improve.
Meditation, mood and fitness-tracking apps are also part of the mHealth movement. Each time you click on Headspace, Calm, MyFitnessPal, Happify, Map My Run or any other great health-focused app, you’re using telemedicine. Part of the greatness behind these devices and apps is that they empower patients with more information about their health and offer more control, and therefore ownership, for personal healthcare and wellbeing without the sometimes scary stigma of healthcare.
The more patients and providers are informed about what telemedicine is and how it can benefit them, the higher its adoption will be and the more it can help. More so than the coining of the term telemedicine, the fact is that healthcare is going digital and advancing the disruption of the place/space relationship we used to have with how our healthcare has been provided. It is now possible to receive healthcare anywhere, at anytime and on any device. This digital health revolution has the potential to reduce healthcare disparities and break down barriers such as language, culture, distance and cost and boost access to health care for those who need it most.
Telemedicine is becoming ubiquitous in the care we expect and receive, and soon we won’t need to specify telehealth components, it will just be called healthcare.
About Jamey Edwards:
Jamey Edwards transformed a small family-owned business into an industry-leading multi-specialty group through the acquisition of a video remote interpreting pioneer, Language Access Network, or LAN (re-founding it alongside its founder, Andy Panos), which would help form Cloudbreak Health, LLC, a leading telemedicine company currently performing over 90,000 encounters per month in over 800 hospitals nationwide. Cloudbreak's mission is to humanize healthcare by leveraging technology to build trusted communication and relationships between patients and providers. Jamey is a double Cornell University graduate, from which he earned both his bachelor’s and MBA, as well as a 4x Honoree for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and 2x Honoree for the LABJ Healthcare Leadership Awards.