It is no secret that the pandemic changed the healthcare delivery model as we knew it. What used to look like patients in waiting rooms for long durations and clinical staff scrambling to meet their needs, now looks like the utilization of telehealth technology to streamline old processes. From the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, clinical smartphones and workstations on wheels in the hospital, to virtual appointments at home, telehealth will continue to redefine the future of healthcare.
In fact, according to Zebra Technologies’ 2022 Hospital Vision Study, telehealth is viewed as one of the leading transformative trends along with interacting with patient health tracking devices and real-time health system platforms. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also considered transformative to the future of healthcare, particularly among clinicians. Hospitals recognize the right collaboration tools and healthcare applications in the hands of both clinical and non-clinical workers can improve the quality of patient care, which supports the expected increase in predictive device and technology usage over the next five years.
While the increasing importance of telehealth may seem daunting for some healthcare providers, it is important for facilities to see this change as an opportunity to maximize the patient experience and overall efficiency of their staff.
Improving Patient Experience and Outcomes
Patients expect and deserve timely and quality care, and healthcare facilities want to deliver on that expectation. That’s why more healthcare facilities are turning to telehealth to provide efficient outcomes and increased patient visibility into treatment plans.
Telehealth technology systems have successfully eliminated some of the barriers that made previous in-person care delivery models inconvenient, such as geographic distance and provider availability. Centralized models are also being used by healthcare facilities to help alleviate the pressures from staff members on the floor by directing at-home patient calls and appointments to nurses, physicians or clinicians in a central call center remotely. By giving patients the convenience of at-home telehealth appointments, healthcare facilities can provide more immediate care to patients and more flexibility to their clinical staff.
The 2022 Hospital Vision Study also cites the strong belief that patients want more visibility into their treatment plans. By supporting patient health tracking devices and real-time health system platforms, facilities can help provide patients with virtual clinical resources that help answer questions and concerns right at their fingertips. This helps give patients more visibility into their treatment plans, more control over their care and overall, more peace of mind. With the help of these technological features, patients stay connected while clinicians stay focused on helping deliver the right care at the right time in the most convenient way.
Promoting Clinician Collaboration
Telehealth also provides an opportunity for clinician collaboration in both at home and hospital settings. Giving telehealth tools to care team members provides them access to specialized assistance from health professionals across cities, countries and even continents. Telehealth technologies help enhance connectivity between different healthcare workers who are caring for the same patient within hospitals across the U.S. and abroad. Those working a case can audibly and visually communicate with each other using clinical smartphones, healthcare-grade tablets and other similar collaboration devices to support even more patients simultaneously.
This kind of clinician-to-clinician collaboration is increasingly helpful in the inpatient setting where nurses can work as a team through telehealth. Inpatient nurses may be assigned to monitor many different cases per shift and cannot be in all rooms at once. In this case, both primary team members and specialists can be called in virtually as needed, helping everyone get up-to-speed on patient status and collaborate on procedural steps for case-by-case medical situations regardless of physical distance.
Next Steps
Transitioning to the new delivery of care doesn’t have to be daunting for healthcare providers. With the right implementation of telehealth tools, facilities can better ensure that they meet patient expectations with a connected and collaborative clinical team. Moving forward, healthcare providers should consider an implementation plan that works for their facility so that they can stay equipped with the best telehealth tools as predictive device and technology usage continues to increase. By empowering clinical staff and patients with the right tools, providers will help increase their return on investment (ROI) and better their operations, so they can focus more on what matters most: putting their patients first.