Can Virtual Visits Replace In-Person Visits?
With the rise of the COVID-19, patients and healthcare providers have sought an alternative to traditional in-person visits. Telemedicine has proved itself to be a great solution.
Telemedicine is the practice of using video or audio communication to deliver clinical services from a distance. Virtual visits are a crucial part of telemedicine, providing an environment for patients and providers to discuss the disease and treatments remotely. Before the pandemic, the inadequate insurance coverage limited telemedicine services to patients living in designated rural areas. In March 2020, the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services expanded coverage of telehealth services for all beneficiaries living in any area. As a result, the number of virtual visits increased by 50% from 2019 to 2020.
Telemedicine offers several advantages over traditional in-person visits. Virtual visits eliminated transportation costs and allowed patients to contact distant specialists. During the pandemic, many patients used virtual visits to consult healthcare professionals during quarantine. Those with chronic conditions could frequently check up with their physicians without risk of COVID exposure. Virtual visits also allowed providers to improve care efficiency and reduce waiting times. Without the need to clean rooms between visits, physicians could see more patients and patients can more easily get medical attention. Thus, telemedicine has become a popular alternative to in-person medicine for both patients and providers.
On the other hand, patients and healthcare professionals face many challenges with adapting to telemedicine. In order to deliver telemedicine services, healthcare professionals and patients must have certain equipment and software services. It can be time-consuming, costly or unfeasible for non-tech-savvy providers or elderly patients to use telemedicine. For patients seeing a new physician, it’s difficult to build trust and a connection without physically meeting each other in the same real environment. The lack of physical interaction prevents physicians from reading body cues and can make intimate discussions about serious illnesses more difficult. In addition, virtual visits limit the services a provider can deliver. Patients may have difficulties taking their own vitals and physical measurements without proper equipment or extensive guidance. Risk of cyber security crimes in telemedicine also raises concerns for patient privacy protection. Virtual visits over video-communication platforms store protected health information (PHI) which may be leaked to third-party sources.
New technologies are looking to address these challenges. Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) can also bridge the gap between patient and provider in digital spaces. Through body tracking sensors and digital headsets, AR/VR also immerses both patients and physicians in a 3-D space, allowing them to read each other’s body language and communicate more smoothly. These technologies have immense potential in psychiatry practice through telemedicine (telepsychiatry), as therapists can use AR/VR to expose patients to generated and controlled stimuli in cognitive-behavioral therapy. Clinics like the Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Oncology clinic at Yale New Haven Hospital have also used VR in remote support groups to encourage participation in therapy sessions. Other companies like Kinotek have developed visual movement software to help healthcare professionals visualize and analyze patients’ body movement using 3D computer vision.
Non-invasive medical monitoring devices are overcoming the limitations of taking vitals in telemedicine. With devices like wearable biosensors, patients can continuously track vital signs like heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rhythm from home and share it with their providers. As a result, physicians can monitor and detect early signs of illnesses remotely. These devices are greatly effective for high-risk cardiac patients or individuals with chronic conditions like diabetes by providing real-time feedback and promoting adherence to medical advice.
As for privacy concerns, new developments in cybersecurity technology aim to secure HIPAA compliance in telemedicine platforms. Platforms like Doxy.me hold video sessions in encrypted channels and enforce regular and permanent deletion of protected health information (PHI). In detail, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to detect potential threats and identify weak spots in cybersecurity systems.
Other technologies aim to make specialists more accessible over large geographic areas. For instance, Mercy Hospital in Missouri established a virtual medical center that allows a group of specialists to provide care to 122 ICU beds throughout the state. These telehealth facilities allow specialists to provide frequent and necessary treatment to more individuals.
Throughout the pandemic, the prevalence of virtual visits and telemedicine services has drastically increased. Virtual visits allow individuals from all geographic regions to receive care from providers within the comfort of their own homes. As new technologies develop, the quality and accessibility of telemedicine services will be improved and be on-par with in-person medicine. In the future, virtual visits are likely to replace many, but not all, aspects of traditional visits and become a critical part of medical practice.
