How to Provide Telehealth Services During The Covid-19 Crises

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a paradox in mental health for many people. During this unexpected crisis, healthcare services are coming up with a lot of changes to reach out to the patients through telehealth services so that the patients can receive services from the doctors without traveling to the hospital and can maintain social distancing from others during travel and in hospital.

What are the best ways to reach the patient/ doctor?

The doctor should analyze the patient’s needs and figure out the best way of remote options. This way the patients can be treated through telehealth which includes telephonic communication wherever possible to avoid member congregation with potentially sick people.

By using telehealth services any doctor can treat any patient from any location. This mode of service will help lakhs of people who live in rural areas as well as urban areas in this present pandemic situation.

Telemedicine uses two-way electronic audio-visual communications that deliver clinical healthcare to a patient from the telehealth provider located at a distant place.

This method of services can help to exchange the information between the doctors about the patient’s health condition. The patient can also send the health information in the form of patient-specific prerecorded video or digital images from a provider at an originating site to a telehealth provider at a distant site.

Face- face video chatting can be done with the patient to understand the health condition.

Remote Patient Monitoring – this method uses digital technologies to gather medical data from one location and transmit the information securely to health care providers in a different location for assessment and recommendations. Monitoring programs can collect a wide range of health information such as vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate, weight, blood sugar levels, blood oxygen levels and also electrocardiogram readings. Remote patient monitoring may include following on previously transmitted data conducted through communication technologies or by telephonic conversation.

Another benefit of telehealth is creation of Electronic Health Record (EHR). EHR of any patient is the digital version of patient’s health records including his medical and treatment history. EHR provides accurate, up-to-date, and complete information about patients at the point of care and enables coordinated and efficient care.

Telehealth services can be taken up by any stream of specialists such as physicians, dentists, nurses, pediatrics, psychologists, midwives, pathologists, physical therapists, gynecologists, etc.