Telemedicine During COVID-19

As people around the globe are now being urged to shelter in place (please stay home!), telemedicine is becoming increasingly vital. In fact, because our medical professionals must remain healthy, the need for remote technologies has soared this past month.

Many federal health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are taking significant steps to make telemedicine during the COVID-19 crisis easier on both anxious patients and physicians.

The federal government also reduced a significant cost barrier for telemedicine adoption by smaller physician practices as it declared Medicare and Medicaid would pay the same rates for virtual visits as for in-office appointments. It has also temporarily eased regulations to allow the use of their mobile devices for virtual visits.

In addition, the FDA has opened up telemedicine guidelines, now allowing healthcare providers to use consumer health devices to remotely monitor patients.

The new policy allows doctors to utilize devices that measure body temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate and blood pressure. There are many other scenarios, as well. For example, some providers are using sophisticated telemedicine systems that allow for a secure screen-to-screen conversation between patient and provider, with features that place patient information directly onto virtual charts. And there are also additional visual options available – think Zoom and Facetime.

Smart Approach: Telemedicine Usage Rising

Telemedicine allows patients to more easily access healthcare and be treated remotely by a provider using everyday technologies, like a tablet, smartphone or a computer.

Doctors can reach patients and/or their family members via video visits to provide care and address patient needs as a disease progresses. As part of the approach, physicians and patients share information in real-time from one screen to another, and they can even capture and analyze readings from medical devices in remote locations.

And there is incredibly smart logic for telemedicine care right now. A person with possible COVID-19 symptoms often presents with a fever and a dry cough – other symptoms can be difficulty in breathing, lethargy and loss of smell and taste.

Telemedicine can help by allowing healthcare providers to safely and efficiently assess and identify potentially infected patients – whether via video conferencing or text communications.

If a patient exhibits as high-risk for contracting COVID-19 – or has been diagnosed with it based on symptoms– he or she will most likely be urged to stay home and self-quarantine. In these scenarios, virtual consults help doctors keep a watchful, safe eye on disease progression, allowing them to treat and monitor patients with milder cases and determine who is sick enough to send to a hospital.

Furthermore, these patients won’t be as much of a risk to the healthcare providers who might otherwise be exposed. As more health care workers fall sick (and even die), the need to protect the frontline is increasingly critical.

How does telemedicine affect healthcare and holistic care?

• Create a bridge from Telemedicine to Energy Medicine.
• Write about how holistic energy medicine practitioners have been providing telemedicine for eons.
• Healing across time and space has been widely accepted and used in Energy Medicine.