As mobile devices now play an essential role in our daily lives. It’s important that we can take advantage of this to ensure that we improve our health. Many years ago, it would have been impossible to receive healthcare remotely without physically seeing the doctor or healthcare practitioner. However, technology has made it possible with the creation of online doctor apps and the birth of a new phase in healthcare delivery, now known as telehealth or telemedicine.
The use of mobile health apps now ensures that we can manage and take care of our health every day while reducing exposure and cutting down healthcare costs. Telemedicine and the use of online doctor apps have a lot of benefits. It has ultimately helped to facilitate and improve our lives, but how has it done this? Here’s how:
1. Remote monitoring improves engagement with patients.
As value-based reimbursement and consumerism continue to rise within the healthcare system, there must be new ways for doctors to engage with their patients to help them with self-care. Being proactive in treating patients means that health practitioners also have to teach the patients how to take care of themselves in-between their hospital visits. The only real way to accomplish this is through telehealth.
With the constant rise in chronic health conditions, doctors and clinicians have their work cut out for them already. Telehealth ensures that they can provide remote monitoring, in-between their busy schedules, to other non-physically present patients. This will reduce the number of people they physically attend to daily. Ultimately, it’ll reduce their stress levels and cut down on healthcare costs for the patients.
Telemedicine now ensures that doctors can get the patients’ metrics from their homes and use them to guide the patients on their way to recovery.
2. Improves speed and efficiency of healthcare delivery.
One way to measure the quality of healthcare delivery is by the efficiency of the whole process and the speed with which the patient gets the service. Mobile health apps can fulfill these parameters systematically.
With mobile health apps, healthcare delivery has become much more fast and efficient in unprecedented ways. These apps now allow patients to track the foods they eat, the sugar levels, the number of calories they consume, etc. This ensures that patients have a fast, continuous, and effective method for them to be updated. It’s easier for patients to share their data with their doctors or healthcare giver, and they can get a quick and efficient response. Patients’ ability to share their health data with doctors with ease and get instant answers on what to and what not to do is why telemedicine is effective and efficient in healthcare delivery.
3. Increases the efficiency of healthcare practice and clinical workflows.
Increasing the efficiency of clinical workflow is a significant advantage of telehealth. It’s a means to ensure the quicker prioritization of healthcare delivery. It can improve the healthcare systems by receiving, saving, and using patients’ data to ensure that clinicians and healthcare workers can make better medical decisions.
Many doctors and healthcare givers now report that telemedicine is an essential feature of healthcare delivery. It can help in facilitating the improvement of performances, such as increasing the satisfaction scores of patients.
4. Healthcare providers can collect patient data with much ease.
The collection of patient data is essential in improving healthcare delivery. However, healthcare providers don’t always find it easy to come about these data. This has now changed with the use of online doctor apps. Healthcare providers can now share data with much ease between hospitals and patients. Critical patients’ information such as medical history, prescription, vitals, lab results, etc., can now be shared by hospitals remotely without any form of hassle. So, there’s no longer a need for healthcare providers to fill out forms every time continually. They can easily get the data to receive unnecessary paperwork. With all the information within their reach, it’s easier for them to give out treatment and solutions to the patients without the stress of taking them through different forms of tests. This will help the patient save some healthcare costs and cut off numerous unnecessary burdens from the healthcare practitioners.
5. Improve overall quality of healthcare delivery.
The use of online doctor apps has improved healthcare quality, especially within rural areas, according to The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This technology makes it easier to treat acute conditions and ultimately improve service delivery. With telehealth, unnecessary ER visits are also cut short. It’s more convenient for patients to receive treatment as they can get treated by doctors without leaving their homes or traveling a long distance to a health center.
Conclusion
Healthcare cost is at an all-time high, and it continues to rise exponentially. Thankfully, the introduction of online doctor apps means that patients can save a lot from their healthcare costs without compromising on the quality of healthcare that they receive. There are many other ways that this app helps to improve our lives, as discussed in this article.
Author Bio:
Susanna Balashova is a creative magician in a world of (mostly) boring Marketing. She turns dreary work things and essay writing service to be exciting and effective and likes creating her world within some fanfic sketches. Reach out to her on Twitter or Linkedin.