Reports Increase of Telehealth’s Potential to Contain Coronavirus
Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials stated that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) will spread in the U.S., meaning that hospitals, communities and individuals should ramp up their preparedness efforts. One action patient care organizations could take, the department said, would be to add telehealth options.
On a Feb. 25 media briefing call, Nancy Messonnier, M.D., director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, also noted, “Students in smaller groups or in a severe pandemic, closing schools and using internet-based teleschooling to continue education. For adults, businesses can replace in-person meetings with video or telephone conferences and increase teleworking options. On a larger scale, communities may need to modify, postpone, or cancel mass gatherings. Looking at how to increase telehealth services and delaying elective surgery.”
As of March 2, there have been two confirmed deaths the U.S.—both in King County, Washington—and the virus has now spread to at least 12 states, with almost 90 cases in all. Globally, the disease has killed more than 3,000 people and infected almost 89,000, with the vast majority of cases and deaths in China.
Following the CDC update last week, a STAT article noted that while telehealth could “help triage the sick and keep the worried well out of already-crowded medical facilities,” major barriers still do exist. Historically, this healthcare sub-sector has found it challenging to win over consumers.
“The biggest challenges stem from factors that don’t exist in China, like our vast array of private, state, and federal payers with varying reimbursement policies and state-based medical licensing,” Linda Branagan, the director of the University of California, San Francisco’s telehealth program, told STAT.”
Another challenge is that for the virus, “which appears to be primarily a respiratory illness, many clinicians are looking into patients’ lungs to get an adequate assessment of their condition. Digital tools can’t really be used to do something like that unless patients already have the equipment at home,” STAT noted.
At the same time, at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), “digital health tools originally designed for the flu are being turned into triage techniques for coronavirus, and the hospital is proactively reaching out to patients with flu and cold symptoms who had scheduled in-person visits to do video calls instead,” according to STAT.
What’s more, video visits are helping combat misinformation about coronavirus and keeping healthy people out of the hospital, Bruce Aylward, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official who led a recent mission to China, said on a separate call last week, according to STAT.
Telehealth company Teladoc, which provides virtual health services in more than 130 countries, said during the organization’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 earnings call last week that it’s expected a larger outbreak of the coronavirus in the U.S. would drive up the company's virtual visits. One out of every eight virtual visits in January was related to the flu, and over half of those visitors had not used Teladoc's platform before, according to Healthcare Dive, which covered the earnings call.
Chinese consumers have also turned to virtual consultations for advice about possible coronavirus symptoms, according to a Reuters piece that reported even if not under a quarantine, many are worried that lengthy visits to the doctor’s office or hospital would increase their chances of catching the virus. “The surge of inquiries has also been driven by healthcare platforms offering some services for free amid the epidemic,” Reuters reported.
