Life has turned upside down in the past few months. With the outbreak of COVID-19, many things have changed including the position of telehealth in healthcare delivery.
Since there have been over 125,000 deaths in the United States with a continued requirement for testing and personal protective equipment (PPEs), the fear of contracting COVID-19 is understandable.
Amidst these events, healthcare has witnessed a rise in telehealth. Healthcare organizations may or may not be ready, but the era of virtual care is here, with telehealth spreading the change.
Challenges in telehealth:
Till recent times, the key challenge in the adoption of telehealth were geographic limitations and the originating site of care. CMS restricted Medicare reimbursement to telehealth services that met one of the below three criteria:
The patients getting treatment was located in a facility that was approved like provider’s office or a hospital.
The site is located in a designated rural health professional shortage area.
The program is part of a federal telemedicine project.
The declaration of COVID-19 has made CMS to use waivers to remove these obstacles, at least for now.
Other challenges are majority of people don’t have proper access to the basic infrastructure that can facilitate a virtual visit.
Also, reimbursement of virtual services is a significant challenge and both patient and provider should be comfortable with the virtual visit setup.
The road ahead:
Healthcare systems and hospitals following a patient-centered approach to healthcare need an effective strategy to communicate with patients. Now they are leveraging healthcare data platforms that support secure and real time virtual visits to connect with more patients, triage them fast and to improve care coordination.
Virtual care saves up valuable and scarce resources during the pandemic. Telehealth adoption should be ramped up in a planned manner so that it significantly contributes to screening, testing and treatment efforts against coronavirus.
For patients who have healthcare issues unrelated to COVID-19, virtual care makes it possible to deliver care remotely, without exposing them to the risk of the coronavirus.
We are facing challenging times and telehealth is far from perfect in the current world; many of the adjustments are temporary. But, one day the reign of coronavirus will end, but telehealth will remain a predominant part of U.S. healthcare.