Taking a Second Look at Telemedicine

By Nancy Wurtzel

Physician shortages and declining reimbursement are causing the healthcare industry to consider innovative alternatives for delivering patient care.  One method, Telemedicine, which was introduced in the early days of the internet – with mixed results – is now getting a second look.

Telemedicine can be described as a real time, interactive, and electronic communications between a patient and practitioner.  Its purpose is to improve the patient’s health.

Initially, telemedicine was billed as “virtual house call,” allowing patients to bypass a traditional office visit in favor of a real-time audiovisual connection between doctor and patient.

The idea had real potential, but the reality didn’t live up to the hype.

A big hurdle at the time was the technology itself – it wasn’t sophisticated enough to support the concept of telemedicine.  Consequently, physicians and patients often had problems communicating due to poor internet connections or unreliable equipment.

Health care providers were also slow to embrace telemedicine.  Rightly so, providers were reluctant to diagnosis and start a course of treatment without seeing the seeing the patient in real time.

Those who did embrace telemedicine were mainly for-profit companies.  A typical telemedicine service was aimed at busy professionals and other consumers who needed medical advice, but also desired convenience.  Their fee-for-service model bypassed insurance companies and sometimes skirted state and local regulations by labeling their service as “providing information” rather than medical advice.

For their part, patients often reported being dissatisfied with their telemedicine experience.  Many received a wrong diagnosis, or they went through the entire process only to be told they would need to see a doctor face-to-face to get a prescription, test or other course of treatment.

However, much has changed in recent years.  Technology, for instance, has improved significantly, plus patients are savvier about how to use it.

Many providers are also embracing technology to help them manage more patients as well as the rural population, which may not have access to needed healthcare.

Today’s telemedicine is growing at a steady pace.

Melinda Beck, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed the use of remote monitoring and delivery of services at its annual meeting in June 2014. The organization also noted that the market for telemedicine is expected to grow from approximately $1 billion in 2016 to $6 billion by 2020. The move by the AMA, along with support from the Federation of State Medical Boards, is helping pave the way for fewer restrictions to telemedicine across the United States.”

Perhaps the time has come to reconsider telemedicine. But how can providers implement it?