4 Reasons Telemedicine Is The Future of Critical Access Hospitals
Critical care hospitals have many challenges that they have to face. Being a smaller hospital and trying to keep overhead costs low, they have a limited amount of beds and staff. Affording to fully staff a hospital is hard and even harder to find ones for the night shift.
Telemedicine is a new age way of being able to help a critical care hospital stay up and running. You wouldn't need to have the full-time cost of staffing doctors through the night. With telemedicine carts, you can wheel the cart to the patient's room and page an on-call doctor to care for the patients straight from the comfort of their home. There are many pros to using telemedicine to your critical access hospitals, here are just a few of them:
1. Patients Don’t Wait For The Doctor to Arrive
When you have a reason to call an on-call doctor into the hospital in the middle of the night, it takes time. The doctor is being woken up and needs to get dressed to leave the house. You also need to think of the fact that the doctor may not live close to the hospital.
When you use telemedicine carts, the doctor can be paged and on a video screen in a matter of minutes. It will make for quicker answers for the patients and resolutions. It is still a personable relationship for patient and doctor since they are able to see each other on the screens.
2. One Hospitalist Can Cover Multiple Locations
Using a telemedicine approach to your night time staff gives opportunity for one doctor to cover many different hospitals. When the doctor isn't having to drive into the hospital it is cutting down on the amount of time that the hospital is needing that doctor. Allowing more time to serve more patients.
3. No Exposure Risks to The Coronavirus
Right now, more than ever is a great example of reasons to use telemedicine. With hospitals needing to keep exposure rates as low as possible due to Covid-19, having less interaction with people is better. This is a way to still provide excellent care for patients and keep the interactions of face to face at a minimum.
4. Doctors Are Less Likely To Burn Out
Physicians have a heavy load of responsibility when it comes to the emergency department at the hospital. Around the clock care and work that they are taking care of. Being on call and having to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the hospital, can become stressful for a lot.
It is so easy to get burned out and feel the need for a break. With telemedicine, it is a way to help alleviate that feeling. It will make way for the hospital to even out the workload that is being given to these doctors. Taking some of the stress overloads off of them, and allowing them to maximize their services.
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