What Caregivers need to know about Telehealth

Telehealth delivery is a promising solution to providing healthcare when there is a distance between doctors and patients. This is especially important for people who act as caregivers for the patients who are receiving care.

Many people choose to Telehealth calls with patients who are under their care, because of distance to visit the doctor, or because the patient is too ill to travel.

One of the challenges caregivers must consider is whether the doctor is able to do everything which is necessary for the patient without the same access to medical resources and procedures, as they would have in a live clinic.

For example, the attending physician might need to use a stethoscope to hear the patient’s hearts or lungs, test reflexes, palpate his/her abdomen, examine the patients mouth, nose, ears, draw blood or other fluids, take tissue samples (biopsies), examine with a specialized medical device.

They may also need to provide simple care such as making an injection, fixing a bleeding or a wound or fracture, carry out external resuscitation or surgery, using a special therapeutic device such an external pacemaker, and many others.

Due to an increase in digital health technology some of these tasks may now be carried out caregivers using connected health devices such as electronic stethoscopes or ECG, heart rate meters, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation meters, glucose meters, etc. These devices are often able to transmit data to the attending physician. Some treatments may also be carried out by a non-physician assistant visiting with the patient, in close contact via video conferencing with the attending physician.

Of course, there many medical needs that cannot be accomplished at a distance in healthcare, and this often severely the usefulness of Telehealth in many remote places.

In many countries, such as the USA, physicians are licensed to perform only in certain states, and this puts a limit as to how they can provide diagnostics and care to patients living in places where they are not licensed to work. So if a caregiver is seeking care from a doctor in a different state, then Telehealth may not be an effective solution. This is a challenge in particular for third-party doctor service providers.

The final consideration for caregivers using Telehealth is to how to protect patient confidentiality, data integrity and sharing information with doctors. Since today all telemedicine is provided via electronic networks and stored in databases, there can be a risk of violating the rights of the patients and of the professional providers involved. Data encryption and HIPAA compliance are important to make sure that everyone is protected.

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