What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of virtual healthcare? Before looking up what it is, one of my first impressions was an online video call with a doctor. It turned out that this depiction wasn't so off the mark about virtual healthcare. Doctors interact with patients using technologies that allow them to exchange information without the bounds of distance is what virtual healthcare is, except it covers a broader spectrum of health services and does not just replace the need to visit a doctor’s office.
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Virtual healthcare is essentially an umbrella term and specific kinds of virtual healthcare services are referred to in terminologies like telehealth, telemedicine, and telecare, all describing the remote interactive experience of healthcare. Sometimes, the word ‘telehealth’ or ‘telemedicine’ is synonymously used with the word ‘virtual healthcare’, but it alludes to a slightly different context. For example, telemedicine and telehealth both involve the delivery of medical, diagnostic, and treatment-related services using telecommunication technologies, but telehealth includes other healthcare service providers like pharmacists, nurses, and social workers while telemedicine is usually just doctors. Telecare includes technologies itself, such as health and fitness apps, tracking and monitoring sensors and tools, medication reminder systems, and more. With new terms like digital health and e-health being updated, it is important to remember that virtual healthcare is ever-evolving with technological advances.
To look at where virtual healthcare is heading from today, we first need to acknowledge that it is already integrated into our day-to-day lives. It has been growing steadily before Covid-19. In the American Medical Association's digital health report, the survey of physicians showed increased telehealth visits and remote patient monitoring from 14% in 2016 to 28% in 2019 backing the steady growth even before the pandemic. What is significant about the coronavirus pandemic is that it influenced the expansion of virtual healthcare services. In dire need of social distancing, the state and federal governments temporarily loosen the regulation around telehealth. The federal government eased the medicare restriction on telehealth, making sure it allows real-time audio and video technology and includes
smartphone and audio-only communication. Many states expanded the state-regulated health-plan requirement that telehealth services are covered by insurance. Individuals could get insurance coverage for their access to telehealth and pay at the same rate as other in-person care. In some cases, deductibles and copayments were temporarily suspended. Global healthcare leaders investing in telehealth rose 64% throughout the year 2021, said the Phillips 2021 future health index report. Pandemic made global leaders discover the potential of virtual care and convinced the public and medical professionals to see the benefit of virtual healthcare.
Covid-19 definitely brought a paradigm shift but the real question is, will virtual healthcare stay after the pandemic is over? The answer is likely to be yes. We have to take into consideration that Covid-19 will not go away anytime soon, and even if the world passes it, there’s always a risk of another infected disease lurking in the dark. There are consumers who want to keep using virtual healthcare even after Covid-19 because they like it. According to a 2020 survey report on the state of patient engagement, 87% of patients who tried telehealth are satisfied with the telehealth experience. Another survey in 2021 from Healthcare Finance revealed that 88% of healthcare consumers in the US are explicitly demanding virtual care once Covid has passed. Another factor that affects the future of virtual healthcare is legislation and regulation. The real reason virtual healthcare could proliferate during the pandemic is that the government curved the regulation and set up the legal foundation for physicians. These changes are only temporarily effective until the Covid-19 is over, but the ongoing legislative proposals on virtual healthcare give some clues that it might not all disappear after the pandemic. According to the Center for Connected Health Policy, many states have already proposed a bill that either extends declaring the public health crisis that allows telehealth practices or creates regular standards for practicing telehealth and prescribing medication.
With proposed legislation underway, it is likely to presume that virtual healthcare will stay with us, however, there are limitations to virtual healthcare that gives some people to predict the halt of growth.
One of them is the chance of diagnostic error. In virtual communication, reading a patient's body language and getting visual clues are harder than in-person communication. There’s much research on the maintenance of health using virtual care, but the impact on diagnostic quality and safety is unknown, and published evidence on the effectiveness of telemedicine for diagnosis is fairly limited. There’s still much to learn about telemedicine's diagnostic quality and safety or the effectiveness of overall telemedicine. Improving the accuracy of diagnosis in telemedicine will be the challenge for virtual healthcare to expand. Another limitation of virtual healthcare is the inequalities in digital literacy and lack of infrastructure that is also exposed during the pandemic. Not all people have a high-speed internet connection and access to personal mobile devices. Older generations who are not familiar with digital technology are left behind.
Author : Chansong Kwak
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