New thinking for new challenges

The coronavirus pandemic has forced companies of all sizes and types to rethink how they can continue to do business in a world where personal contact is discouraged, and in-person transactions are limited.

As the world continues to change, providers understand that the way they practice medicine is changing. Telehealth continues to be an important tool for providers as they adjust and adapt to the safest and most effective methods to care for their patients. Here are two specialty practices that have been using telehealth technology to reinvent themselves for success.

The logistics of an Alaska office visit

Visiting Southeast Medical Center in Juneau, Alaska, isn’t usually as simple as boarding a bus or hopping in the car. For many patients, a trip to the doctor means riding a ferry or taking a floatplane. Add a pandemic to that, and the practice’s survival is at stake.

Getting a taste of telehealth

Remember Mikey from those old Quaker Life Cereal commercials? He tried something his brothers would not. And he liked it.

Providers using healow TeleVisits™ are finding the service helpful in keeping their practices running efficiently and bringing quality care to their patients. In April, there was a 16X increase in healow TeleVisits utilization.

When you think telehealth, do you think cardiology? How about podiatry? As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, specialty providers needed a way to continue caring for their patients. Although telehealth technology isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when someone is thinking about orthopedics, practices of all kinds are utilizing telehealth to shape the future of healthcare.

Who would have thought that one day we’d be able to conduct doctor’s appointments from different corners of the earth?

COVID-19 forces a paradigm shift

It may not be on a par with the introduction of x-rays, penicillin, or genetic analysis, but the sudden increase in the use of telehealth technologies in response to the coronavirus pandemic constitutes a paradigm shift for medical providers everywhere.

How technology is making new connections

Through the ages, thinkers such as William of Ockham, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein speculated upon “action at a distance,” how natural forces could be transmitted across distances with no physical connections.

healow TeleVisits™ were created to make care easier for the patient and provider. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, providers across the country realized that televisits were a safe, secure, and effective solution to bring comprehensive care to their patient base. As a result, a 16x increase in televisit utilization has occurred in the last month.

The three-part challenge of a pandemic

For medical practices nationwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed a three-part challenge.

• How and to what extent can they manage to stay open for business while protecting the health of providers and staff?
• How do they continue to serve patients when so many of them are apprehensive about making a physical office visit?
• If a practice does find a way to continue operations, how can they make sure patient volume and insurance claims will be enough to support the practice financially?

The upbeat and warm sound of last year’s hit “Swingin’ Down the Lane” by Isham Jones fills the quiet of your parlor as you remove the stethoscope from your neck and lower the volume on your new radio. As you sit in a chair as angular as a Picasso, you pick up the latest copy of Radio News magazine and shake your head in wonder.

On the cover of the April 1924 edition of the magazine, three children are seated in front of a square system with two dials, a flaring horn, and a screen in the center of the contraption. With mouths wide open, the kids are saying “Ahh” as the image of a suited doctor equipped with robotic fingers like the metallic tentacles of the Martian ships from The War of the Worlds is projected onto a screen. Hugo Gernsback named this invention the teledactyl.

The role of chronic disease management

Although the cost has been high, the coronavirus pandemic has illustrated how much societies around the globe share — and how they can come together to improve health.

As telehealth usage continues to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic, practices everywhere are finding new and exciting ways to expand their access to care.

Imagination reshaping healthcare

Much attention has focused on how public health authorities and politicians are coordinating policies, equipment, and supplies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.