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Everyone has their opinion when it comes to how to provide more affordable, efficient healthcare. The healthcare providers want this, and the health insurance companies want that, and the government says we should do it this way, and …<\/p>\nEveryone has their opinion when it comes to how to provide more affordable, efficient healthcare. The healthcare providers want this, and the health insurance companies want that, and the government says we should do it this way, and …<\/p>\n
Hey, wait a minute… Did anyone ever stop to ask\u00a0the patients what we want?<\/p>\n
Isn’t it amazing how consumers are often force-fed the types of services they are provided?\u00a0For instance, we rely on the government to determine how the health care system will be reformed, but do we really have a voice?<\/p>\n
We assume that\u00a0doctors\u00a0and care facilities will be progressive enough to begin implementing Health Information Technologies into their infrastructure, and that they will be forward-thinking enough to start now in managing\u00a0our health records electronically, and that they will do everything they can to streamline\u00a0delivery of healthcare with new and widely available resources — such as telemedicine.<\/p>\n
The questions are: how willing and eager are healthcare providers and facilities, and are they really listening to what the patient wants?<\/p>\n
Well, there is\u00a0a study out in the June edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine that emphatically states that patients, even older patients, want telemedicine to play an integral part in\u00a0their general healthcare. So listen up providers!<\/p>\n
To borrow a line from the study summary…<\/p>\n
“We set out to study patient attitudes toward electronic personal health records and other emerging and future electronic health information technologies,” explains the study’s lead author Jan Walker, RN, MBA, Instructor in Medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. “And we learned that, for the most part, patients are very comfortable with the idea of computers playing a central role in their care.” ![\"Surgeries](\"\/blog\/files\/media\/image\/Telemedicine%20Scrubs%20Guy%20Camera.jpg\")
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In fact, she adds, patients said they not only want computers to bring them customized medical information, they fully expect that in the future they will be able to rely on electronic technology for many routine medical issues.<\/p>\n