With today being tax day in the U.S., many of us are focused on what we have paid in taxes, and what we get for our contributions. As our budget balloons to levels that some in both the White House and the Congressional Budget Office call unsustainable, many are thinking about how the country can lower healthcare costs (and therefore lower our collective tax burden). The question is how do we work to control the expansion of the U.S. budget while keeping a high level of care for patients? One answer is telemedicine.
Telemedicine offers a way for patients to use today’s technology to communicate with their doctors. Existing telemedicine communication tools include simple interfaces like phone, e-mail and fax. Newer tools include self-service healthcare websites and live video conferencing such as Skype or Google Wave. Telemedicine also includes home health, web-based medical decision support to self-diagnose, online PDR (physician desk reference), and direct interaction with remote medical resources via electronic collaboration tools. Armed with this technology and better information, patients take a more active role in their health. Care effectively shifts from a passive to a more proactive healthcare model.
Don’t forget that telemedicine isn’t about the technology, however. Technology is the enabling tool that allows patients to play a more active part in their healthcare. Telemedicine moves some patient care from traditional settings such as hospitals and clinics to that of the patient’s own home or location, saving us time and trips to the doctor. Today we are already using telemedicine tools such as phone, fax and email. But new more interactive self-service tools are being created all the time to help patients communicate with their healthcare providers easily and quickly, making us better informed and more in charge of our healthcare. Doctors use telemedicine to have access to the latest medical information available, and use aggregated data and baselines of care from a large collective of patients with the same health issue. This gives our doctors better information so they can provide us with the best care plans.
As access to telemedicine tools becomes more ubiquitous, patients will be able to communicate with their doctors on their iPhones, for example, no matter where either party may be located. In essence, telemedicine represents a patient revolution. It is on the path to becoming the leading way patients communicate with their doctors and doctors communicate with other healthcare providers to provide us with better care. Telemedicine holds promise for producing huge time and cost savings and improving care and outcome for patients. We can all benefit in the adoption of telemedicine, by the reduction in costs (which should help control the overall healthcare budget).
While telemedicine helps make patient care more convenient, effective and inexpensive, it cannot cure how we feel about paying taxes, unfortunately. But we can take solace in the fact that as telemedicine is adopted and becomes more common, it will help reduce healthcare costs, which should help reduce taxes for everyone.
