Covid-19, Telehealth & Your Family

This guest post is from Tifani Silveria, Regent Law 3L, who wrote her law review student note “Whole Woman’s Health: Not the ‘Whole’ Story” (for which she received third place in the Hassell Writing Competition) on the subject of telemedicine:

It’s official: the United States is the new epicenter of the global pandemic, COVID-19. With nearly 200,000 reported cases as of April 1, shelter-in-place orders are becoming more prevalent across states, hospitals are becoming inundated with new patients, and the mortality rate is steadily increasing. The U.S. healthcare system is trying its best to keep up with demands for diagnoses, testing, and treatment, but its resources are limited. What’s more, physicians are struggling to keep themselves and their families healthy while working hard to treat the public at large.

Enter, telemedicine: the remote delivery of health care services and clinical information using telecommunications technology such as internet, wireless, satellite and telephone media. Many physicians, once skeptical of telemedicine because of its complex licensing requirements, high cost technologies, and a lack of reimbursement, are learning to adapt to this new technology, not only for the benefit of their patients, but also out of necessity.

Telemedicine is user-friendly and easily accessible. Technology companies in the state of Washington—one of the areas hit worst by COVID-19—insist that an effective telemedicine system requires many of the same technologies used in smart phones. Telemedicine also permits physicians to assess the seriousness of each patient’s case and prescribe necessary care while limiting the physician’s direct exposure to the virus—now of critical importance considering that healthcare providers must keep themselves healthy in order to properly treat the rest of the population.

Telemedicine is vital to the health of all patients—not just those who have contracted the coronavirus. Rather than risking greater exposure to the virus by traveling to their physician’s office and sitting in a waiting room inundated with COVID-19-infected patients, a patient with a medical condition unrelated to the outbreak may utilize telemedicine to obtain the care they need from the safety of their own homes. Still more, President Trump’s timely decision to broaden access to Medicare telehealth services earlier this year provides many high-risk patients with the financial protection they so desperately seek during this time of uncertainty.

Although the situation may look bleak, resources that may help ease the burden on our nation’s healthcare system may be just a phone call or click away—and will protect you and your family.