When you’re sick, your immediate response is to book an appointment for your local hospital and get checked up as soon as you can. However, just like many things, Covid is changing the World including healthcare. With physical visits putting both you and the healthcare providers tending to you at risk, you’re forced to wonder what you can do during this situation.
Hospitals and healthcare establishments have been looking for the safest way to deliver care to people in need, and their wishes have been answered by telehealth.
Though virtual urgent care isn’t a breakthrough in the medical scene, it has increased significantly since the pandemic happened.
Covid is Changing the World Including Healthcare
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, we’re here to tell you all about it and how COVID is changing healthcare as a whole!
What is Telehealth
Telehealth is essentially a tool that helps medical professionals have real-time appointments with their patients through their phone or any other digital device. It’s a way for people to have meetings with any professional and have it at the safety of their own homes. That way, the patients don’t have to sit uncomfortably in public while fearing that they transmit COVID during their visit.
Healthcare providers and some hospitals had had telehealth experience before the pandemic started, but many people didn’t know that it existed until now. People now know the wonders that telehealth can bring through contactless appointments online and the sheer accessibility of telehealth since it can be done anywhere.
Usage of Telehealth
Telehealth is the solution to many restrictions that you may put on yourself because of quarantine and social distancing. Whether you’re a person in need of primary care, or a business offering telehealth as an option for their health benefits, telehealth can be a fantastic tool.
Though it can’t be used as an alternative for emergencies that can be a matter of life and death, it can still be used for checkups or day-to-day healthcare provided by family physicians or the likes of that. Telehealth can also monitor patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes because of how convenient it is compared to getting in-person checkups regularly.
Telehealth isn’t all about maintaining patients with chronic illnesses and short doctor’s appointments and checkups. Mental healthcare is a pretty large telehealth area that people are starting to warm up over the recent months slowly. Since in-person visits to therapists and psychologists have been put to a halt because of the pandemic, talk therapy through online mediums have been the choice for people with mental health illnesses.
We’ve even gone to the point where we have to expand our mental health programs to provide better psychiatric care through telehealth because of the increasing demand. For the mental health community, this is a big step forward that can save a multitude of people who are currently suffering on their own because of quarantines and self-isolation.
Telehealth and How It Deals With COVID
Telehealth has eliminated the risk of COVID transmission purely because the process is done online. The removal of face-to-face interactions between doctors, patients, and nurses alone can significantly affect our fight against the coronavirus. This is especially true for elderly patients that are more susceptible to the virus and have switched to digital healthcare entirely because of its convenience and safety.
Despite all the upsides the telecare has, it does come with its fair share of challenges and downsides. For one, many private practitioners are compromising cybersecurity because of how quickly they’re trying to transition online. There’s also the fact that they have to scale their services to try and meet or exceed the rapid increase in demand.
Telehealth-What The Future Holds
Even after the pandemic starts to die down and doctors’ visits don’t have to run with the risk of transmission anymore, telehealth will still be a big part of the medical industry. Being incredibly convenient for people in remote areas or for people who need a quick checkup and diagnosis, telehealth will be here to stay.
With more and more optimizations being made, and the fact that it’s faster and cheaper than regular checkups, we’re excited to see how telehealth will affect healthcare as a whole. With virtual healthcare now a great option for many of us here in New York City we can look forward to greater care, and staying healthy!
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