With hospitals and medical professionals alike overwhelmed by the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine offers an alternative way to seek medical attention without exposing yourself to possible infection.
Over the last decade or so, telemedicine, also known as telehealth, and its enabling technologies have grown increasingly sophisticated. As defined by the American Telemedicine Association, telemedicine is “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status.”
In its most primitive form, a telephone call between a physician and patient falls under the umbrella of telemedicine. Today, however, doctors can closely monitor a patient’s recovery from surgery or chronic illness via face-to-face televideo conferencing technology. The value of such sessions can be further enhanced by providing patients with basic tools for measuring their vital statistics, like blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation.
Effects of Current Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has:
- Put unprecedented demands on healthcare facilities
- Sharply reduced in-person visits to doctors’ offices and emergency rooms for non-COVID 19 health issues
It is in this area of healthcare that telemedicine can be most helpful in filling the gaps.
While telemedicine clearly isn’t the ideal medium for treating COVID-19 symptoms, it could be a first point of contact. For instance, a participating doctor could refer a patient with obvious COVID-19 symptoms to a hospital. However, it is telemedicine’s ability to relieve some of the non-COVID 19 pressure from hospitals that makes it so valuable.
People with non-emergent health issues can get the medical attention they need by using telemedicine technology. Even the government has clearly endorsed telemedicine with its moves to significantly improve reimbursement for this remote type of care.
What Telemedicine Can Do
Apart from enabling face-to-face consultations between you and your physician, MayoClinic.org notes that telemedicine also facilitates these other transactions:
- Prescription refills
- Summations of previous visits and reviews of test results
- Future appointment scheduling
What If You Think You’re Infected
For patients who are concerned that they might be experiencing the early symptoms of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the Harvard Health Blog suggests a few steps to take before conferring with your doctor via telemedicine:
- Write down all your current symptoms, taking care to note any medications that you’ve taken to relieve those symptoms.
- Be prepared to answer questions that might help the doctor to determine if you’re truly suffering from COVID-19. Sample topics include recent travel, contact with those who have recently traveled, and the persons with whom you’ve recently had close contact.
Telemedicine is ideal for dealing with certain medical issues, particularly those that don’t require extensive physical examination. Among such issues are erectile dysfunction (ED) and other sexual disorders, as well as questions pertaining to reproductive health, according to KFF.org.
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