What are the Pros and Cons of telehealth?
How will you approach and perform a telehealth assessment?
What are the limits to telehealth?
What is the difference between the provider\’s need for a successful telehealth visit versus the Patient\’s perspective?
The paper is to be clear and concise and students will lose points for improper grammar, punctuation, and misspelling.
The paper should be formatted per current APA and 2-5 pages in length, excluding the title, and references page.
Incorporate a minimum of 5 current (published within the last five years) scholarly journal articles or primary legal sources (statutes, court opinions) within your work.
Telehealth Medicine
Student’s Name
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Telehealth Medicine
Introduction
In normal circumstances, doctors, nurses, and other care professionals care for their patients at the hospital or in physician’s offices. However, computers, smartphones, and other digital technologies have changed the trend and health care professionals can now treat, oversee treatment, and diagnose patients virtually (Khandpur, 2017). Telehealth is the delivery of health care services to patients at a distance through the use of digital information and communication technologies. Telehealth is a rapidly growing aspect of health care driven by emerging health issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic that limit the movement of people (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). In that regard, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the pros and cons of telehealth, how to perform telehealth assessment, the limits of telehealth, and its perspective among patients and physicians.
What are the Pros and Cons of telehealth?
Telehealth has both advantages and disadvantages that every health care provider should be cognizant of. Beginning with the pros of telehealth, it helps in saving costs of treatment because the patient does not spend money on transportation to the hospital or physician’s office (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). Telehealth makes health services accessible to many people, including those in rural areas. With telehealth, a patient does not need a good road or a vehicle to access medical services because it happens through the internet. Telehealth is also convenient because treatment happens in the patient’s comfort zones. The patient simply uses their computers or phones and shares information on things like food intake, blood pressure, weight, diagnostic results, drugs, and others the doctor gives recommendations or advice (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). Telehealth can keep individuals safe from pandemics such as COVID-19 because they do not have to walk to the hospital for consultations and follow-up purposes.
Telehealth has some cons, for instance, it is not possible to conduct every type of visit remotely, making it a limited exercise. A patient will have to walk to the hospital physically for issues such as imaging tests and blood tests (Khandpur, 2017). Telehealth data transmitted electronically has security threats. One might simply log into the device and retrieve the patient’s confidential information. Telehealth requires smart devices that some patients may not have. It also requires strong network and internet services that might be limited in some rural places (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). Overall, telehealth is believed to have more pros than cons, making it a good choice.
How will you approach and perform a telehealth assessment?
Telehealth assessments are becoming more common in healthcare, especially, when a patient does not have to walk physically to the healthcare center. Before starting the assessment, it is important to decide on the platform to use and the device (Taylor, 2021). It is also important to have a pre-call with the patient and confirm if they are ready. Ask them to test the technology if they are working well. The care provider can initiate the assessment by checking connectivity and clarity and whether the other person can hear and see them. There should be a formal introduction to the patient. Verbal consent is required from the client before the start. During the assessment, the caregiver can maintain the written records just like it would happen with face-to-face consultation (Taylor, 2021). To close the assessment, it is important to summarize the key points, clear any doubts the patient might have, remind the client to continue with medications, and confirm whether the client was happy with the telehealth assessment.
What are the limits to telehealth?
As mentioned above, telehealth is not 100% efficient because it has limits. Telehealth is not appropriate for all patients in all clinical situations. Telehealth may not work where there are no internet services or effective devices to conduct the process (Latifi et al., 2020). Services such as blood tests, diagnostic imaging, and severe illnesses cannot be resolved through telemedicine, they require a physical visit to the doctor’s office. However, there are some impressive examples of telehealth collaborations, such as remote ICU capabilities for managing strokes (Latifi et al., 2020). Therefore, there is hope that telehealth will one-day break through the limits and achieve much more imaginable capabilities.
What is the difference between the provider’s need for a successful telehealth visit versus the Patient’s perspective?
There are no significant differences between providers’ and patients’ perspectives of a successful telehealth visit. The provider wants to see the patient hear and see him well. The Provider wants to see the patient answer the right questions and uses the medicine as indicated (Mataxen & Webb, 2019). To a healthcare provider, a successful telehealth visit will lead to improvement of the health of the patient. From the perspective of the patient, a successful telehealth visit is when there is clear communication between the two (Mataxen & Webb, 2019). The patient wants to see the health care provider hear and see him or her well. The patient wants a stable network and good devices to use.
Conclusion
Today’s world is more complicated and simple at the same time. As medical services become more complex, access to health care services continues to become simpler with the emergence of telehealth. It allows patients to connect to their providers virtually. There are more positive impacts of telehealth than negative ones. Both the patient and care providers have almost similar perspectives on successful telehealth.