Question

Telehealth is being used more and more. Sometimes, a physician is not available, but using Telehealth, the physician and patient can interact. Sometimes when a patient is being transported from one facility to another, Telehealth is use to introduce the patient to the providers at the facility they are going to. Although this appears to be a great way of connecting through the use of technology, patients at your hospital have complained that it is awkward using Telehealth and the staff complains that it is difficult to use, and IT is always concern about hackers infiltrating the video components. As the CEO of your hospital, what strategies will you use to address these complaints? How can Telehealth be improved? Will you continue to use Telehealth, and why or why not?

Answer 1

Even though, telemedicine and telehealth are boon to health care, health care providers, patients and IT personnel complaint about certain issues which have to be addressed.

Strategies for patients to feel at ease and comfortable while using telemedicine:

Patients must be educated about the concept of telemedicine which include assess to a physician regardless of location, least travel needs and use of emergency care services.Telemedicine also act as a huge support for clinicians at remote area.

Strategies for Health care providers to ease the use of telemedicine:

Health care team including physician and nurses must be extensively trained in skills and hands on expertise of telemedicine related internet software interventions and virtuality based health clinics which is supported by stake holders.Quality check and feedbacks could be performed and data could be collected.

Strategies to prevent hacking for complaints of IT personnel:

Policies on cybersecurity could be formulated.Security software could be updated timely basis.Frequent checks on public network system could be performed.Highly secured password should be created and only be assessed by authorised personnel at work.

As a CEO, I will continue to use telemedicine as it is extremely beneficial for health care providers and patients to interact for better health care outcomes in a virtual environment without any trouble.

Telemedicine could be improved by providing awareness to patients on it's user friendly outcomes, periodic training of staffs on duty followed by feedbacks and highly secured support system for the prevention of cyber insecurities.