The Role of Telemedicine in Chronic Disease Management
A chronic disease refers to one that continues for at least three months or more, like type 2 diabetes, chronic heart disease, cancer, and more. Unfortunately, management of chronic diseases has proven to be a glaring challenge for not only healthcare professionals but the patients they treat as well. Several reports have found that roughly 40 percent of the population of the US is suffering from a chronic disease. That’s about 133 million people. Researchers believe this number will touch 157 million by next year. What further highlights the enormous challenge that is chronic disease management is the fact that just seven chronic diseases, namely, diabetes, cancer, stroke, hypertension, pulmonary conditions, mental illness, and heart disease, have a cumulative effect on the economy to the tune of $1.3 trillion every year.
Suffice it to say that this is a problem is so crucial that healthcare companies are focusing a tremendous amount of efforts on addressing it effectively and quickly at that. They need resources that will help them reduce the cost of chronic disease management without taking a toll on the quality of care they provide. Thankfully, a nifty capable solution is found in the form of telemedicine. Among other things, telemedicine allows professionals in this industry to monitor patients remotely, which is besides lowering the costs associated with chronic disease management. However, these are not the only benefits of telemedicine for healthcare providers and patients in the context of efficient management of chronic diseases.
Let’s discuss some of the other advantages that it offers
1. Specialized care accessibility: Telemedicine empowers patients to contact all sorts of healthcare professionals, including specialists, without even needing to leave their homes. As a result, patients get better access to specialized care, and the cost of care is also reduced via the removal of travel costs.
2. Proper management of medication: Chronic conditions typically involve the administration of several medicines. However, it is vital to ensure that the doses as well as the combination is precise, which tends to take time. Telemedicine facilitates medication management from remote locations, thus saving patients the challenge of making several visits to their healthcare provider.
3. Triage: Chronic diseases often result in the emergence of new symptoms now and then. Now, these symptoms could be insignificant, an indication of the patient’s deteriorating condition, or perhaps the sign of the onset of a different chronic disease. When this happens, with telemedicine, patients can immediately check in their doctor about the new symptom, that determines the appropriate course of action. As a result, patients can receive the necessary care in a timely fashion.
Telemedicine has proven to be a highly useful resource for healthcare in general and even more so when it comes to the management of chronic illnesses. So telemedicine solutions continue to both healthcare providers and patients to content with the disease in a significantly better way, ensuring the provision and delivery of superior care despite the challenges a chronic illness may present.
