The advantages of telehealth appointments
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the world was forced to adapt quickly to a changing future. Work from home orders led to the rise of programs like Zoom and Google Meet, allowing people to meet face-to-face from the safety of their homes.
Like other industries, healthcare adapted. Telehealth existed before the pandemic, but its popularity has spiked in the last few years, and it isn’t going anywhere. The benefits are too numerous.
What is telehealth and telemedicine?
If you’ve heard anything about virtual medicine, you’ve likely seen the terms telehealth and telemedicine used interchangeably. While they are similar, there is a key difference.
Telehealth refers to the use of technology to provide healthcare services from a distance. Telemedicine refers to remote clinical services. In other words, telehealth is a broader term which includes telemedicine among other services.
From a patient’s perspective, the two terms almost always refer to the use of remote technology to visit a healthcare provider virtually and receive treatment from anywhere.
How does telemedicine work?
Patients who decide to use telemedicine can access healthcare services through the use of a telehealth portal. This portal is an application that can be used on a desktop computer, mobile phone, or tablet.
Once you’ve chosen a secure login, you’re able to schedule appointments, look at prescriptions, view records, and check-in for appointments through the application’s simple interface. Multiple family members can be managed from the account.
You can also manage a health profile on the application where you can monitor your health statistics and store useful information about things like blood type, allergies, and medical history in case of an emergency. This information will also be useful to your doctor during telehealth appointments.
Once your appointment starts, you’ll be able to log in and have a face-to-face appointment with your provider, where you can describe what’s troubling you and receive advice and prescriptions. In most cases, it differs very little from a traditional, in-person doctor’s appointment.
The benefits of telehealth
If telehealth is so much like a traditional doctor’s appointment, you might be wondering why you should bother. The truth is, however, that telehealth appointments offer a huge set of advantages that make them attractive to a wide variety of patients. Let’s explore a few.
Convenience and comfort
No matter how close you are to a healthcare provider, you’re a lot closer to your computer or mobile device. With telehealth, there’s no need to drive to a clinic, wait in a waiting room, and sit in an office awaiting attention from a provider.
You can easily fit a telehealth appointment into a smaller time period like a lunch break, reducing your need to adapt your schedule around your appointment time. Even if your day is wide open, you may prefer to stay in the comfort of your own couch bed or couch. This is especially true if you’re sick.
A safer choice for sick patients
Visiting a doctor’s office is not only less comfortable than staying at home when you’re feeling ill, but it’s also safer. If you’re infectious, you run the risk of getting other people ill in the waiting room or examination room. If you aren’t infectious, you run the risk of becoming sick due to someone else.
A reduction in germ spread is always a benefit in healthcare, especially in the era of Covid-19. This is doubly true for patients who are elderly, pregnant, or otherwise immunocompromised.
An ideal choice for rural patients
If you live in a big city, a healthcare clinic might be right around the corner. Even if it isn’t, getting to a place where you can be treated likely won’t take longer than ten or fifteen minutes by car. If you live somewhere rural, this is likely not the case. In some rural communities, residents must drive an hour or more to receive treatment.
Telehealth makes healthcare far more accessible to rural residents than ever before. Why drive an hour or more to a town with a healthcare clinic when you can get quality treatment from the comfort of your own home? Serving rural patients was one of the original intentions of telehealth, and it remains one of its greatest strengths.
Telemedicine at Great Salt Plains Health Center
Whether you need a routine checkup or treatment for a specific ailment, Great Salt Plains Health Center has urgent care telehealth appointments available to you. See our compassionate staff from wherever is most convenient for you. To get started, follow these instructions to install our telehealth portal.