Understanding Telehealth
With COVID-19 keeping most of us home these days, otherwise healthy patients are being forced to make some tougher than usual decisions regarding their medical and musculoskeletal healthcare, including orthopedic, sports medicine and podiatric care.
You may find yourself asking, 'Do I stay home, stay safe and just deal with my muscle or joint pain, or do I risk going out and sitting in a crowded waiting room at my doctor’s office, urgent care, or the emergency department?'
As if going to the doctors/surgeons office was not stressful enough beforehand; between the out-of-pocket costs, the time off work and the various other hoops that we are forced to jump through, both from a logistics and insurance standpoint — now we have to additionally worry about social distancing as patients! With the above said, many clinics around the country still have not even started opening back up to regular patient care yet.
Some patients and providers have now turned to telehealth and “distance healthcare” as a viable option to continue their medical care. Telehealth, or telemedicine as it may be called, is a not-so-new option, but one which has gained tremendous traction over the preceding month.
Via telehealth, orthopedic and musculoskeletal providers can offer a lot of the same treatments that may be offered in a brick and mortar, office based setting — a prescription for a medication or particular brace or splint, a referral to Physical Therapy (in office or online), or an order/referral for imaging such as an X-ray, MRI, or CT scan. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, orthopedic practices had scantly adopted this technology, so there really were not many distance healthcare options for patients dealing with orthopedic conditions, including musculoskeletal pain such as: neck, back, shoulder, arm, hand, knee, leg or foot pain.
Now, however, many orthopedic surgeons and sports medicine physicians have embraced this technology and are capable of providing patients with the same level of musculoskeletal and orthopedic medical care they would receive in an office-based setting, without ever having to leave the comfort and safety of the patient’s home.
With today’s technology, specialized healthcare providers and surgeons can bypass the constraints of a traditional, office-based practice by utilizing either live video, or an even more convenient and patient-centric asynchronous-video platform, to reach their patients remotely. With the latter, patients may now be seen after hours, nights and weekends, at the patients’ convenience not the doctors!
Via telehealth/telemedicine, patients can have direct and safe access to specialized physicians and surgeons for some quick answers to new musculoskeletal complaints, or they can receive ongoing care for established or chronic orthopedic, sports medicine or podiatric conditions.
— Dr. David Eisenhauer, is the founder of MoonlightOrtho, a nation-wide Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Telehealth platform, which can be found at: www.MoonlightOrtho.com
- Are you using Telehealth for your health care needs?
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