Knowledge Knugget: Telehealth vs Telemedicine

Telehealth vs Telemedicine

 In this week's Knowledge Knugget we talk about telehealth vs telemedicine. It's a question that we get all the time. While the words are often used interchangeably, they are quite different. 

Learn more about the following: 

• What is Telemedicine? 
  • Historically, telemedicine is what you've heard for years. A lot of times it is referred to and you'll hear people say that they have telemedicine when it's just a phone, no video talking to a doctor. 
• Telemedicine in Rural Areas
  • People also refer to telemedicine that is facility to facility. You might have a rural hospital that has a telemedicine cart hooked up to a camera in a particular room used to connect with a specialty doctor in a larger location. 
  • With an accessibility issue in rural communities, telemedicine was typically used as the nomenclature of that. 
• What is Telehealth? 
  • The term telehealth means something different than telemedicine. When you talk about telehealth, this is making it so patients can connect anywhere. This could mean the patient is at home, in their office, their car. It doesn't have to specifically be in a hospital connected to a telemedicine cart. 
  • Telehealth is truly the future, it's where things are headed. As a healthcare organization, you need to be thinking that, to acquire and retain your patients. 
  • It's an innovative healthcare technology that allows you to service patients after hours and on weekends and get that billable revenue. This can expand your business beyond the physical four walls. 
  • Whether you're a hospital or specialty doctors using it for followup, proactive care, and pre and post-operative appointments, it has to be telehealth. The home can be used as the originating site and it's simple and easy to use for the patient. 
• Improving the Physician Experience with Telehealth
  • While patient experience is critical for telehealth adoption, the physician experience is a key to telehealth adoption as well. A lot of the times you'll see telemedicine platforms sending your patients to download third-party applications. The physician becomes inundated with tech support questions rather than practicing medicine.
  • Patients may be wasting valuable time. They may have to download an app or ask the doctor what code they have to enter or what link they have to go to. This puts the physician behind schedule for appointments held in the office. 

Telehealth vs Telemedicine - Key Things to Consider

So as you look at telehealth vs telemedicine, there are key criteria that you need to consider. 

• Scalability 
• Patient Experience 
• Physician Experience 
• Telehealth Cost Effectiveness

If you're implementing telemedicine, you're going to be buying expensive hardware, software, medical carts at 90% more costs than a true browser-based telehealth solution. So if that's in your cards and you're trying to scale it, whether it's now or in the future, don't get into a situation where you're contemplating telehealth vs telemedicine. Our telehealth includes a browser-based solution.

Thanks for watching Coffee with Carrie on the difference of telehealth vs telemedicine. Download our latest white paper "Pros and Cons of Telehealth" and listen to the healthcare podcasts where we talk about all the use cases for telehealth.

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