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Benefits of Telehealth Apps for Service Providers & Patients

The benefits of telehealth apps have begun to change the way healthcare is viewed across the globe. Giving more control in the hands of the service providers and the patients, through remote monitoring, enabling sharing of data, and remote treatment. Telehealth is becoming synonymous with convenience; quality access to care and improved mechanisms to conduct provider-patient interactions.

Though further improvements are underway which include virtual health-facilitated through robotics and automation, providing greater convenience for service providers by relieving them of mundane operational tasks, administrative work, and recurring assignments, much of the benefits offered by existing services are mostly unknown to the general public.

Applying innovative practices into healthcare has opened up a world of endless possibilities from using virtual assistants to manage and schedule appointments to processing prescription orders, transcribing clinician notes automatically, and accessing medical records with ease.

All these factors are helping remove social and economic barriers from the existing system so that more time is spent on quality healthcare provision.

As more progression is made in digital and telecommunication technologies to facilitate the healthcare sector, new sub-branches of telehealth are emerging. Previous literature attempted to bring clarity between the differences associated with telehealth and telemedicine among the general masses by defining telehealth as a broader scope of remote health care services that also takes into account telemedicine. Since then, innovative remote healthcare practices such as telepsychiatry, teledermatology, teleophthalmology have started picking traction in various parts of the globe.

According to the recent Deloitte analysis of hospital revenue trends, it has been recorded that over the last several years, hospital inpatient revenue has been decreasing due to a clear shift towards virtual settings.

How Important Are Telehealth Apps During The Current Pandemic?

With social distancing and remote working becoming a widespread phenomenon globally, more and more efforts are being invested to keep health and safety at the heart of all activities for people of all ages. With an increase in concepts like work from home, remote schooling, and online shopping to avoid physical grocery shopping, the pandemic has also caused a massive acceleration in the use of telehealth services and applications.

Many healthcare professionals had been benefiting from telehealth services for decades but the current covid-19 conditions have brought a surging upwards due to the benefits it has to offer such as remote monitoring, consultation, and treatment. As per the recent consumer survey by Mckinsey “consumer adoption has skyrocketed, from 11 percent to a staggering 46 percent in 2019 of US consumers using telehealth”.

Service providers have also started experiencing the benefits of telehealth apps and its rapidly scaled offerings – witnessing a sharp increase in the number of patients from 50 to 175 times via telehealth in comparison to the past.

Before the advent of Covid-19, healthcare stakeholders were experiencing an annual turnover of approximately 3$ billion with a major focus on virtual urgent care but as the demand began to increase due to pandemic crises, the consumer and provider adoption of telehealth and extensions of telehealth grew with now estimated to be worth $250 billion.

The demand is likely to increase with each passing year hence scaling telehealth should not halt due to the likelihood of covid-19 vaccines being introduced globally. Telehealth is the most effective way to provide greater access to necessary care for patients in remote areas, increase convenience for patients to access care when they need it, and receive affordable quality healthcare. Solutions offered by remote monitoring and treatment are more efficient, can reduce the cost of care as well as provide potential increases in provider productivity.

Importance of telehealth apps and remote monitoring

Benefits of Telehealth Apps forService Providers

Improving patient engagement through remote monitoring

The increasing demand for efficient healthcare delivery and round-the-clock healthcare supervision has led medical organizations such as hospitals and private clinics to enhance patient-provider engagement. Treating patients through a more proactive approach that requires clinicians to teach patients regarding self-care to avoid unnecessary clinical visits has become a priority concern. Increasing chronic health conditions require remote monitoring through which medical providers can improve outcomes while reducing operational costs.
Increase in access to care to reach more patients

Knowing the simple fact that the number of patients will always outweigh the number of medical practitioners globally is enough to understand that telehealth is the way forward. It can help grow provider networks in areas where healthcare resources are scarce and help expand access to care to remote areas of the world.
Significant increase in practice revenue

One of the critical areas where telehealth plays a significant role is decreasing overhead costs per visit for the service providers. This does not only impact the service provider but significantly reduces the service cost charged to the patient. Such innovative healthcare services can aid in saving hefty operational costs while still increasing revenue through attracting and retaining more patients.
Improving the quality of healthcare service delivery

Telehealth services leverage technology to improve service delivery and remote treatment of chronic and acute conditions. Through such provisions, telehealth can improve the overall standards of healthcare, providing more convenience for patients.
Reducing patient no-shows

Cutting costs is one such area where healthcare providers struggle to maintain quality service delivery. No-show patients have adverse effects on the running costs of a medical facility where healthcare professionals have little or no control over. In such cases, telehealth apps bridge the gap between service providers and patients by providing remote diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. This enables rural patients to save traveling costs as well as ensure a presence for medical appointments. Subsequently helping service providers save operational costs as well as benefit from growing clientele through expanding access to care for all

Benefits of Telehealth Apps for Patients

Easy to Use

Video conferencing has become a household phenomenon during the current pandemic crisis, which requires no need for any special software, hardware, and can connect you to anyone with just a click of a button. The same has been linked with telehealth where people can video chat using standard webcams or already built-in camera phones to consult a medical practitioner. This can be applied to consultation, therapy, and diagnosis after guiding a patient on how to access these features.
Greater Connectivity

One of the remarkable impacts that telehealth through its remote usage is providing patients and providers greater connectivity, which loosely translates to removing the need to be in the same room, or building, or time zone, to communicate. This flexibility for patients enables them to access care anywhere using a data connection. Patients through these means can save up valuable time and transportation costs just to consult a doctor.
Faster & More Efficient

One of the ways where telehealth proves to be highly efficient is through automated processes that save time and cost for the service provider to manage appointments or manage form submission from new patients. Communication technology has enabled patients to fill and submit all the necessary paperwork online through secure, digital connections. Less paper usage is also a contribution towards an eco-friendly environment.
Freedom to choose

Previously, a patient was limited to healthcare centers due to the distance factor but with telehealth, people have a broader set of choices to choose from. The liberty to reach out to the top doctor of a particular specialization was an impossible notion to consider due to geographical limitations that can now be contacted easily through the use of a telehealth platform.

As teleheath apps continue to evolve and offer endless benefits for service providers and end users, it is important to incorporate features that enable each segment of the population to benefit from it such as featuring screen magnifiers for the elderly or vision impaired community, adding a text-to speech component. Such features will allow maximum participation from all segments of the society to connect and engage with healthcare providers just as the rest of the society.