‘Virtual Care’ is currently the biggest trend in the healthcare industry. The demand for virtual care is significantly growing, and many health care sector stakeholders are shifting their resources towards extending virtual care management and delivery for a stronger healthcare system. According to a report published in 2016, the revenues for the USA virtual care sector is expected to hit $3.5 billion by 2022.
Generally, there are a few fundamental factors that are prompting huge spike in virtual care demand. Some of the key factors include the ongoing projected shortage of physicians, increased demand, higher customer expectations, promising technological advancements, and fundamental changes in state and federal laws favoring virtual care. Employers and health policies (stakeholders with strong incentives to incorporate virtual technology with personal care) are all openly pushing for virtual technology adoption.
The human touch aspect in caregiving
Nonetheless, despite the adoption of virtual care care, improving the entire healthcare system, several challenges hinder health systems and hospitals from adopting modern practices. Many physicians are still skeptical, citing concerns about virtual care management, eventually replacing the human touch aspect in caregiving.
However, virtual care technologies work as a cohesive and complementary approach for patient treatment instead of being an in-person care replacement. The idea behind virtual care delivery is to inform, accelerate, customize, and boost human’s capacity to take care of each other. Alternatively, providers who adopt virtual care get an opportunity to offer
more coordinated, connected care.
This guide briefly defines virtual care and examines the increasing industry and consumer-level interest in virtual care, highlighting both prospects and limitations for caregivers. Although our main goal is to demonstrate the importance of extending virtual care management for a stronger healthcare system, we will also address common problems that limit its extensive adoption.
What is Virtual Care all about?
Virtual care generally covers numerous aspects of telecommunication and digital technologies that offer quality health care. virtual care acts as either substitute or complement for care built on resource availability, organizational capacities, and the general patient population.
The primary objective is to improve and ease access to distinctive critical services and minimize cost limitations across the care industry. Here are some ways of how virtual care can be used in the care industry:
- Telehealth: For better patient monitoring through applications like tele-psychology, eICU, and tele-stroke.
- Chronic disease management: To improve alerts and monitoring for chronically-ill patients
- Synchronous Care: To ease and simplify patient's access to caregivers
- Remote Patient Monitoring: To help providers better understand patient health information and facilitate constant monitoring.
- Virtual Social Work: To enhance communication and promote better care for the under-serviced persons
What’s at stake?
In the virtual care care model, health systems, health policies, and hospitals all have a unique position in the system due to their capacity to influence care across the field. Nonetheless, although numerous provider organizations recognize the trend toward adopting virtual care, several fall short of embracing this approach.
Physicians fear that extending virtual care management for a stronger healthcare system may terminate human-centered care. They fear that it's replacing or discounting its significance. Moreover, several clinicians share skeptical views about data security, medical errors, and technology access.
Consequently, providers are exhibiting less eagerness to the idea of virtual care technology than consumers. Demand is continually outpacing its widespread adoption in the health industry.
The idea is not about virtual technology replacing the human touch in healthcare. It is geared towards boosting and improving care delivery. By extending Virtual Care Delivery, physicians can lighten their load by delegating their tedious administrative duties.
This way, they can spend more time practicing their profession and offering better care for their patients. Additionally, it will open them to more prospects to further enhance their skillset through AI virtual assistants.
Virtual care offers effective ways to help improve provider-patient interaction and
enhance the typical patient experience. Virtual care Management can help providers improve clinical results, promote patient engagement, save costs, and easy access to health. Multiple application examples and widespread research proves it!
Summary
The practice of extending virtual care delivery for a stronger healthcare system is fast growing in popularity. Several providers show reluctance over concerns that this will substitute in-person care. Despite this, virtual care care aims to promote provider-patient interaction.
The human-touch in health care maintains its value because virtual technology acts as a supplement to the current care delivery services. We are convinced that extending virtual care delivery for a stronger healthcare system is important for health systems and hospitals.
With the massive shift in consumer demand, limited telehealth capabilities in EHR technologies, and the evolving nature of technology, virtual care is necessary. Organizations should embrace the modern systems. What's more, many more care providers worldwide continue to embrace the adoption of virtual care systems. Keeping this in mind, we anticipate a more systematic integration of virtual care with in-person visits at all care settings including major health systems.