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Healthcare Reimagined: Creating a Better Remote Care Experience

Healthcare Reimagined: Creating a Better Remote Care Experience

Apr 14, 2020 — Marte Holt Sannesmoen

The New World of Healthcare

At its core, healthcare is about people taking care of people. When the transmission of disease is a concern, the meaning of caring for each other and staying close means keeping our distance. The current situation has created an even bigger need for virtual workflows in healthcare to reduce the risk of transmission of disease.

There are many pain points when it comes to in-person consultations, both for the patient and clinician:

Patient

Mobility constraints
Travel costs
Time constraints
Insufficient supply of expertise
Waiting times

Clinician/Staff

No-shows
Data management and administration
Limited reach
Limited expertise

A Low-Threshold Offer

With virtual consultations, medical staff can consult, provide advice and prescribe treatment, all whilst patients can be in the comfort of their own home. Many healthcare providers have already embraced telehealth as an alternative option to clinic visits for people living in communities with limited access to quality care or for people with mental or physical conditions that struggle to attend an in-person consultation.

“Using video has improved the quality of remote consultations and makes our support more appropriate to each individual. It also appeals to younger and tech-savvy patients.” Debbie Bodhanya, CEO of Stellar Healthcare.

Virtual consultations create a low threshold offer and allow more people to get the care they need. Reducing the need for physical waiting rooms will ultimately reduce the risk of disease transmission to both frontline workers and patients, which can have great implications on public health.

Greater Access to Multidisciplinary Teams

Videoconferencing allows healthcare staff to liaise with one another. When faced with complicated clinical cases outside their area of expertise, they can consult with specialists in the field by the touch of a button. This saves time, which we all know can ultimately save lives. In this way, smaller facilities can access a broader knowledge base, which will help improve patient outcomes. This is something that vRad has embraced, and through the use of Cisco Webex video conferencing technologies they are able to connect patients with remote subspecialists and multidisciplinary teams. This technology significantly reduces the time between diagnosis and treatment, which leads to better patient outcomes. Watch the full case study here.

“A service user can come into a clinic and sit in front of the video conferencing endpoint. They’ll dial an expert clinician who can then offer remote engagement and consultation. There’s so much value in that technology because we don’t have to have those types of experts in every service site. We can pull them in by moving outside geographic boundaries.” Daniel Cook – IT Network Manager at Turning Point