Thursday, August 30, 2018

The Benefits Of Making Available Telemedicine Services

By Carol Sanders


When you live in a small town without a hospital or doctor's office, you often have to think carefully about how you want to take care of your health. Do you want to drive dozens or hundreds of miles away to get medical care you might need? Would you rather forgo it altogether and instead take your chances of staying healthy and safe? These decisions can put families in a tough spot and even create financial, emotional, and physical hardships. To solve these dilemmas for people, more rural hospitals and doctors' offices are investing in telemedicine services to improve patient care.

Being relatively new to the healthcare industry, some people might not understand what these services are or in what manner they can be used today. In essence, they permit doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers to meet with patients virtually. These meetings typically take place over the Internet and allow patients to discuss their healthcare needs with providers located miles away.

A nurse practitioner or registered nurse is often the intermediary in these meetings, hosting the patient in a mobile unit that might resemble a recreational vehicle. The vehicle is actually a medical clinic on wheels and may offer basic services like immunization, blood pressure and glucose checks, and other wellness options for people of all ages. During the course of an appointment, the patient or the nurse might connect virtually with a doctor or other provider to discuss the person's medical condition.

The services also come in useful to hospitals and medical clinics in rural locations that might otherwise be cut off from mainstream medicine. Doctors in these facilities do not have the time to travel miles away to consult with a specialist. Likewise, they cannot take up valuable patient time by calling specialists on the phone or reaching out by email.

The service also permits specialists working miles away to view your patient charts without having them mailed, faxed, or emailed to them. They can see everything that is going on with you as a patient and then give advice to your physician about how best to proceed with your treatments. You might even be able to receive care for diseases like cancer and heart disease in your hometown rather than needing to travel for miles and hours.

As this service is perfected, more healthcare organizations want to make it available in all areas of the country. Some private hospital groups are granting smaller facilities money to set up the services in their locations. The money can even be used to install and maintain wireless Internet connections. It spares these facilities from having to rely on dial-up or broadband Internet services that are not as reliable.

They also can get the cash from the federal government. The government likewise increasingly is investing in rural communities and in this level of medical care. Thanks to the funds, the manner in which people are being treated at small town hospitals and clinics today continues to get better.

Telemedical services now allow people in most locations in the country to get the medical care they need. It connects people to specialists who work in larger hospitals and clinics. It also facilitates better care at rural hospitals and doctor's offices that otherwise might not be up to par with the most current healthcare options for patients.




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