Benefits of Telehealth for Pediatrics
Virtual pediatric patient visits can improve care, enhance outcomes, and lower costs while delivering greater patient and clinician satisfaction. By reducing missed appointments, increasing adherence to recommended therapies, and helping to ensure the appropriate frequency of recommended physician visits, care can be enhanced considerably. A recent survey of members by the American Academy of Pediatrics found common potential uses of telemedicine, all of which are related to timely care and healthcare consumer convenience:
- Diagnosis and treatment of common conditions via virtual visits.
- Routine follow-up visits that do not require an office visit.
- Second opinions that can be provided remotely by a sub-specialist.
- Timely assessment of children with chronic disorders (emphasis on asthma and diabetes) or rare diseases.
- Care coordination for children with chronic or rare disease.
- Virtual urgent care or after-hours access to a physician.
Independent of these needs, pediatricians universally see the benefit of virtual visits in the management of outbreaks of disease. Virtual visits are an especially valuable solution for children with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or behavioral issues, for whom more frequent, convenient contact can improve treatment plan efficacy. In the case of children with rare disorders such as cystic fibrosis or hemophilia, their care can be enhanced by encounters with specialists who practice a considerable distance from their homes. Pediatricians can use virtual visits to implement high-touch yet cost-effective treatment and management strategies to ensure children get the care they require in a timely and convenient manner.
The key benefits of using telemedicine for pediatric care include:
Improved, More Timely Care
Access to Qualified Care
For children who live in remote areas, congested urban areas, or have trouble traveling, telemedicine enables them to access care from skilled pediatric providers and other caregivers without requiring an in-person visit. For infants, children, and adolescents who present at a clinic or emergency department that lacks specific pediatric expertise, telehealth can empower providers to collaborate on a diagnosis and treatment plan.
Convenience
Many pediatric encounters do not involve a physical exam or procedure as the patient’s status is being assessed or the patient and family require further counseling and education. In other cases, device makers can now gather data in the cloud and produce insightful reports that parents can share with providers as part of a virtual visit, eliminating the need to come to the clinic or hospital.
Treatment Adherence
With the ease of scheduling and attending virtual visits from home, care teams can stay in more routine contact with patients to proactively manage their care. With an increasing number of medications previously dispensed in the hospital or clinic now being administered at home, patients and parents can be supported should any issues arise. Greater convenience can mean enhanced treatment adherence, fewer missed appointments, or more timely interventions to enhance the patient experience, potentially leading to better outcomes.
Collaborative Care
Difficult-to-manage and expensive patient populations often require collaborative care across medical specialties or intensive management by highly specialized teams. Virtual visits can be a complement to visiting nurse and other care programs to provide higher levels of care for the most fragile pediatric patients, such as those with sickle cell anemia or epidermolysis bullosa.
Side Effects Management
Virtual visits make it easier for pediatric patients to report side effects or for care teams to engage patients to ensure they are comfortable and to proactively address needs that may arise, such as early management of side effects.
Adjunct Services
The demands on parents’ and caregivers’ time can be a roadblock to a complete assessment of, or access to identification, evaluation, and treatment of co-morbidities. Virtual visits make it easier to deliver adjunct services such as mental health or nutrition counseling directly to the patient at home.
Enhanced Efficiency and Reduced Costs
Reimbursement
Payment for virtual care services has improved considerably in the last five years. 48 states offer some form of reimbursement for video visits, although every state is different and specific conditions apply and must be accounted for. 32 states and the District of Columbia now have parity laws in place that require private insurers to reimburse for video visits, but again, each case is typically unique. The AAP is an outstanding resource or reimbursement advice for its members.
Reduced Urgent Care/Emergency Room Visits
Many children’s hospitals have avoidable case rates as high as 50%, or more. Urgent care and emergency room visits for low-acuity conditions are expensive for medical centers and patients, not to mention significant time in the patient waiting room. A significant portion of these low-acuity, single-episode visits for coughs, colds, and other common conditions can be handled via virtual visits at considerably lower costs and greater patient convenience.
Expanded Patient Base
Through referrals, transfers, and partnerships, hospitals can expand their patient base, providing quality care for more children across the region, the country, and even the world. While children’s hospitals are often viewed as places of last resort, they can expand their catchment areas and better serve the needs of their community with expert second opinions to primary care pediatricians.
Innovation
Pediatricians know that improved health and wellness programs can produce long-term benefits for the total cost of care for patients beginning in childhood through adulthood. A growing interest in community and school-based health programs creates opportunities for pediatricians to create innovative programs engaging children once served by school nurses, who have all but disappeared in many communities. Many rural and inner city health centers struggle with staffing due to their location. Virtual visits can now supplement care in these areas with direct patient care delivered remotely.
Improved Patient Flow
Introducing virtual visits can reduce travel delays and no-shows and ensures patient contact when needed, enabling providers to gain operational efficiencies. Clinic traffic can be optimized for patients requiring in-person care, so that pediatricians can serve more patients and provide more frequent follow-ups encounters via virtual care for those who need it most.
Easier Collaboration
Telemedicine makes it easy for caregivers to interact directly with other specialists or enhance services patients require that may not need an office visit.
The PrimaHealth Pediatric Care Solution
PrimaHealth’s Telehealth platform offers pediatric practices a complete virtual clinic to easily launch online services, enabling services during the diagnostic, active treatment, and follow-up phases of care. Our industry-leading digital exam room provides all the tools needed to engage patients in one click and document the encounter. With advanced capabilities such as multi-party visits, high-resolution screen sharing, and file transfer, the PrimaHealth Telehealth software platform allows telehealth providers to deliver convenient and timely care to pediatric patients wherever and whenever they need it – just as if they were in the clinic exam room.
Key features of the PrimaHealth Telehealth platform for pediatrics include:
Family-based accounts allow a single member of the family to function as a chief medical officer and manage the accounts of minor children tied to one user name and log-in, yet separate PHI for each family member.
Multi-participant sessions allow additional people to be engaged in a single session. A parent can allow a family member caring for the child to access care, and the parent can join remotely and securely. Additional providers can also be invited to the encounter should a second opinion be needed and or a case requires escalation.
Powerful rules engine for intelligent workflow, with customized rules that can control patient registration, ensure patients are routed to the appropriate provider.
Enterprise-level dynamic scheduling systems, enable appointment scheduling by providers, administrative staff, or directly by patients themselves; true on-demand encounters can be facilitated via a unified patient queue vs. the antiquated, one-dimensional, booking-based approach used by others.
High-definition video for virtual exams that can support multi-participant and/or clinician-to-clinician sessions, enabling timely care and decision-making. This high-quality video experience can also improve intimacy with the patient to enhance the clinical encounter.
Screen sharing enables clinicians to present x-rays, CT scans, and MRI images from PACS systems, diagnostic reports, and education materials in real-time to patients or other health care providers as part of a live encounter.
Market-leading compliance adherence and security layers, including HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR and COPPA-compliant software, combined with complete logging of all transactions, with data available for extraction to meet audit requirements.
