What Are the Benefits and Advantages of Telemedicine?

The medical world is constantly evolving. Technology currently plays a big role in the medical domain. As doctors regularly look for better ways to treat people, technology has brought several great advances to the medical field. Thanks to technological advancements such as telemedicine, you could obtain access to medical services or information that may normally be unavailable.

What Is Telemedicine?

Is telemedicine a good option for you? To answer this question correctly, you need to understand what it is.

Telemedicine refers to the exchange of medical information from one site to another via electronic communication. This is done for the purpose of improving a person’s health.

Telemedicine has been around for over forty years. It is a quickly growing field. It can be very hard to get an appointment with primary care doctors and specialists. The waiting list could be long, and even getting a referral does not guarantee a quick appointment. Telemedicine could help bring you and the doctor together more efficiently.

Telemedicine Options

Depending on your healthcare provider’s setup, they could use telemedicine for your consultation. Your doctor could forward diagnostic images like X-rays and your medical history to the telemedicine doctor for them to review.

The telemedicine doctor might have enough information to make a diagnosis and even create the appropriate treatment plan. If not, they could contact you or your doctor for more information. Together you all could decide on the best treatment plan.

Certain healthcare professionals have remote patient monitoring systems set up. These remote systems are continuously collecting and sending data to other healthcare agencies for interpretation.

This is an important step in telemedicine because even if you are homebound, you could easily get your latest health information over to your doctor. A nurse could come, set up all the equipment in your home, conduct the needed tests, and transmit the data to the doctor before the close of business.

Telemedicine is excellent for doctors and people seeking medical treatment when it comes to treatment and diagnosis. It could also be a great support system. You could use it to get consumer medical and health information from the Internet.

For example, if you or a loved one is fighting cancer, you could link up and get specialized information and get involved in online peer discussion groups.

Advantages of Telemedicine

There are numerous advantages to telemedicine.

One of the biggest is it gives you access to specialists and information that you may not readily have access to otherwise.
During a telemedicine consultation, you generally have a chance to tell the doctor about your medical history and ask questions. In turn, the specialist could ask you questions directly.
This telemedicine setup is better than trying to relay information to your doctor or your nurse and then having them relay the message. The specialist could hear the sound of your cough or see your swollen eyes.
You could hear firsthand about your diagnosis and treatment options.

Telemedicine is considered a routine healthcare service. In most cases, it should be billable to your health care insurance without a problem.