Tele Medicine Friend or Foe?

The thought of being able to call, text, or skype with a doctor to get diagnosed and receive prescriptions sounds marvelous. It's inexpensive, an efficient use of time, and has proven to be effective.  Like all new discoveries and concepts people have their doubts, but with a model like this that has the potential to lower healthcare costs tremendously across the board as well as increase accessibility we need to explore every possible option to make this work.

Tele medicine is not a particularly new concept, it has been around since the 1960's.  There have been many laws restricting its use and occurrences that have slowed its progress over time. However, timing is everything. I believe the time is now! With the technology and data we have at our fingertips on a everyday basis there is no reason that we need to driving to sit in a doctors office full of sick people to get a prescription for strep throat when we've gotten it once a year for 10 years straight.

The problems that have previously occurred and many critics think will continue include fraud, privacy, and abuse.  An understandable conclusion based on the past but as we all know, times change.  We need to innovate and make sure these services are used for the right reasons.  

How do we do that?

-Data
 Knowledge is power, and that knowledge is more accessible than ever before. All the data is there it just needs to be unified and readily available for a doctor who is servicing a patient remotely.

-Restriction
Like anything else, there are always going to be people that abuse privilege. If a person has a history of prescription drug abuse or has been found guilty in committing fraud using a service such as this justice needs to be served. I am by no means a lawmaker but I would not be upset if fines were associated with crimes like this, but at the very least placing the offender on some sort of blacklist disabling them from having the PRIVILEGE of using telemedicine would suffice.

-Scope of Work
There needs to be strict limitation on the assortment of treatments and the types of prescriptions that can be written using telemedicine. We can't be prescribing pain meds to everyone that calls saying their back hurts. However someone who has high-blood pressure or another chronic disease should not have to visit a doc in order to get the medicine they need.

-Privacy
Medical documentation is extremely personal and with it flying back and fourth across the Internet it's very easy for it to end up in the wrong hands.  It's currently the biggest setback for telehealth right now and steps need to be made to solve this issue before we see any real progress.

-No Shortcuts
Providers of telemedicine need to be monitored. Proper protocol needs to be observed. Ethics and proper patient care needs to be on top of any telehealth providers priorities.

If we work to fix these bugs with the currently flawed system we will be well on our way to decreasing cost, increasing accessibility, and saving patients and doctors valuable time.  Anyone that follows the healthcare industry can see that it needs changing and this is a region that has serious potential.

EVERA. Everyone should feel this good about healthcare.

Source:
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2014/07/07/how-telehealth-may-be-promoting-fraud-and-abuse/#more-74645