Let me tell you an interesting statistic. According to a study by McKinsey almost 55% of the patients believe that they have received quality care through telehealth compared to in-office visits. Interesting, isn’t it?
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The popularity of telehealth has bridged the gaps in healthcare services between urban and rural areas. A survey of Rock Health suggests that almost 74% of the people in rural areas are using telehealth services and would be happy to continue receiving care through telehealth platforms.
These above stats might give you an idea of what telemedicine has to do with the healthcare ecosystem. However, this rise in virtual care deliveries started with the rise in custom healthcare software development.
Having said that, let me ask you a logical question, if you are also looking to start virtual healthcare practices with telemedicine.
So, what do you need to deliver quality care to your patients virtually?
A quick consultation with the patient and a sneak peek into their health history, right?
Well, telehealth bridges the gaps and allows you to have virtual consultation, but what about a patient’s health history? This is where EHR integration comes into the picture and together they have the potential to literally change the face of your healthcare practice.
In this blog, let’s see how telehealth can enhance patient care activities and help you in better patient care activities while building your own EHR.
Understanding Telemedicine and EHR
First things first, let’s start by understanding what exactly telemedicine and electronic health records are. To sum up, telemedicine is nothing but the use of telecommunication technologies to deliver clinical care remotely or virtually. The use of telecommunication technologies allows healthcare providers to connect and communicate with patients via multiple channels like video conferencing, phone consultation, or secure text messaging.
On the other hand, EHR, also known as Electronic Health Records, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history. The digital document includes patient demographics, doctor’s notes, treatment plans, clinical observations, current medication, past medication, allergies, current or past medical conditions, lab test results, radiology reports, vaccination records, etc. In short, everything you want to know about a patient’s health as a healthcare provider, all you need to do is access the patient’s EHR.
Now, redirecting you to the question asked earlier, by combining telemedicine and EHR you can actually start providing virtual consultation to your patients. The telemedicine would connect you with your patient in real-time and would also add the factor of convenience to care delivery.
Improving Access to Care
Looking at the stats mentioned in the introduction, you must have got the idea that telemedicine improved the access to healthcare services, especially for people in rural and underserved areas. The implementation of telemedicine in custom EHR software, would allow patients to directly book appointments and consult with providers from the comfort of their homes.
Moreover, it also eliminates the need to travel to the hospital or clinic and along with that, the prolonged wait times that they usually encounter in an in-person visit is also eliminated. All these factors contribute to better patient care activities by bringing the attention back to patient care and the role of the connecting link is done by EHR.
In this way, telemedicine and EHR together enhances patient care activities and better care practices, ultimately resulting in better patient care activities. Along with that, by going a step further than this, with the integration of Remote Patient Monitoring devices, you can also continuously monitor patient health and provide better preventive care.
All these activities improves the access to healthcare services and also boosts the morale of patients allowing them to proactively participate in their healthcare activities. This will improve care practice with timely care and improve the overall patient satisfaction rate for your healthcare practice.
Enhancing Patient Engagement
As discussed earlier, telemedicine improves access to healthcare services and that combined with electronic health records empowers patients to be proactively involved in their healthcare journey. But how does it work?
Well, this is where the feature of ‘Patient Portal’ in custom EHR software comes into the picture. A patient portal is basically a comprehensive dashboard that allows the patient to manage their health in a much better and sophisticated way. From the portal, the patients can easily schedule their appointments, view their EHR, connect with providers, manage medication refills, etc.
Along with that, by enabling remote monitoring you create a complete virtual care delivery ecosystem. It will not only...Click here to learn more