8 Advantages of Telemedicine in Acute Care

Telemedicine – interactions with a doctor or other healthcare provider via video chat – has gained popularity in recent years.  But due to the emergence of COVID-19, more providers and practitioners are offering telehealth services than ever before, and Americans are quickly becoming comfortable with the idea of remote medical appointments.

While telemedicine continues to gain favor as a time-efficient and cost-effective alternative to in-office primary care, urgent care, and follow-up visits, it’s become increasingly clear that telehealth technology offers even greater returns for both patients and practitioners in acute care settings.

On-Demand Expertise and Reduced Response Times

Delays in patient care will affect patient outcomes.

Even if an acute care facility has the appropriate specialists on staff, it can take quite some time to get that individual in front of a particular patient. These types of delays are especially likely in large medical centers or when a specialist must travel to the facility from their home or an office-based practice. 

Telemedicine, however, allows highly qualified, board-certified specialists to quickly connect with a hospital or skilled nursing home anywhere in the country or the world. All that’s needed is an internet connection, access to the patient’s electronic health record, and a tablet or other device equipped with a camera and microphone. Remote clinicians can then interact with acute care patients via real-time video and audio, review and share images with onsite members of their medical team, and collaborate on risk-based decisions about their care.

Reduce Coverage Shortages

Telemedicine also facilitates load balancing in busy departments, making it possible for acute care providers to improve coverage despite ever-changing patient volume and needs.

For example, in a busy emergency room, patients may be forced to sit and wait for hours before they can see a specialist and be cleared for either admittance or discharge. But by facilitating remote consults with the appropriate specialists anywhere in the country, an effective telemedicine program can effectively shorten those wait times and address coverage shortages. 

Improved Infection Control

Hospitals and nursing homes do their best to prevent transmission of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. But because it’s impossible to eliminate risk entirely, any in-person encounter between a healthcare provider and patient offers an opportunity for illness to spread. 

By utilizing light-weight tablet roll stands, workstations on wheels (WOW), or mobile telemedicine carts, remote practitioners can connect with acute care patients in their rooms without increasing the potential for disease transmission. Less exposure to other people’s germs helps everyone, especially the chronically ill, pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised.

Reduce Hospital Readmissions

Many patients make unnecessary (and costly) trips to the emergency room or urgent care clinics to get the care they need, especially after an acute health issue. Providing follow-up care via telemedicine technology can help reduce emergency room visits and hospital readmissions, while ongoing communication using remote monitoring can help patients better manage their condition away from the acute care setting.

Reduces Rural Barriers to Care

According to a recent NPR report, one out of every four people living in rural areas said they couldn't access the healthcare they recently needed. The number of rural hospitals is also falling, and more than 100 have closed since 2010. Hundreds of other facilities remain in danger of closing.

Telemedicine technology makes healthcare more accessible for patients who live in distant communities with few specialist options and benefits rural providers by effectively shrinking the distances between care locales.

Facilitates Family Connections

It’s always advantageous for patients to have access to at least one family member who can provide information, ask questions, note their doctors' answers, and receive instructions. Unfortunately, most hospitals and nursing homes have drastically curtailed visitation due to COVID-19, denying many acute care patients a critical line of support.

Telehealth technology has been crucial to maintaining family links during the global pandemic. In the future, these solutions will continue to facilitate these connections anytime visitor restrictions, distance, or work obligation prevent family members from being physically present in the acute care setting.

Lower Cost and Increased Revenue

By allowing access to specialists anytime and anywhere, telemedicine technology enables acute care providers to treat patients onsite and avoid transferring them to other facilities, resulting in better revenue retention.

A telemedicine program can also help ensure patients aren’t turned away from a crowded emergency room and reduce expenses associated with temporary clinicians who would otherwise be needed to fill gaps in specialty care.

Better Patient Outcomes

Telemedicine services improve patient outcomes in the acute care setting by allowing better access to specialists, ensuring the most vulnerable patients receive timely care, and facilitating follow-up when patients live far from care.

But telemedicine technology also produces actionable data for continued optimization of clinical outcomes and more consistent performance, allowing acute care providers to conduct peer-to-peer performance comparisons regionally and nationally and compare physicians' performance within their systems.

Innovate Telemedicine Solutions for the Acute Care Setting

Offering telemedicine services is as beneficial to patients as it is to providers. 

We understand the challenges involved in launching a successful telehealth program in the acute care setting and are ready to partner with hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers to ensure their efforts succeed.  From our Move-It line of telemedicine carts and tablet roll stands to WOW carts and EMR/EHR charting technology, our innovative, high-quality, and ergonomically superior solutions can help providers get a telemedicine program set up and running in a way that maximizes outcomes for both clinicians and their patients. 

All First Healthcare products feature durable, easily cleanable surfaces and materials designed to assist in infection control. And because healthcare technology, specifically the use of tablet devices, is continually changing to support new methods of care and vital record-keeping activities that can save lives, all of our mobile tablet carts and ergonomic tablet mounting solutions are customizable and future-proofed to meet the changing needs of the nation's top acute care facilities.

To Find Out How to Get Your Complimentary Telemedicine Demo Today, Contact First Healthcare Directly at 800.854.8304.