During the pandemic , tele-health offered a safe way for many to access care
organisations that is not just about telemedicine as a modality and which seeks to remove the walls around traditional care models and actually deliver care differently using new modalities .
Dr Chuang said that virtual care should augment tele-health with potentially other devices so that both assessment and diagnosis can be done remotely without requiring a direct face-to-face consultation . Diagnostics devices and monitoring equipment are widely available and growing in number and sophistication , but the trick is to bring these into a unified healthcare system that calls on all the technologies and techniques it has available .
The opportunity to do this comes from challenging past assumptions and taking advantage of the need that the COVID-19 pandemic has created to reengineer and redesign healthcare models of care in a virtual state .
Doing so could potentially lead to greater efficiencies , making it more cost effective and convenient . If access continues to be an issue because of the impact of COVID-19 on traditional fixed facility resources like hospitals and clinics , the virtual care model can potentially expand on it and meet the needs of patients while still providing quality and safe care in a cost-effective manner .
An example of virtual care in this way can be seen in postoperative rehabilitation . After the number of joint replacement surgeries was reduced to a minimum at the onset of the pandemic , orthopaedics departments have not had the luxury of being able to keep their patients warded while performing intensive postoperative care .
“ There has been some good evidence that this is absolutely doable , and it doesn ’ t compromise safety or quality and may actually improve it . This can be done through a virtual home-based exercise rehabilitation system that connects the traditional physiotherapy provider through a video link and letting the patient do exercises for targeted rehabilitation ,” said Dr Chuang .
A study published in the British Medical Journal looked at targeted rehabilitation to improve outcomes and found that it did not introduce any more risk . It actually even improved outcomes relative to similar treatment in the traditional manner .
Nevertheless , there are barriers to any change and innovation in healthcare delivery , especially when these are erected to protect against issues of compliance and making sure that IT systems play well with each other so that any data shared across institutions are accessible , accurate and up to date .
“ Those challenges are solvable but the opportunity is tremendous for improving the patient experience in the delivery care by healthcare professionals ,” said Dr Chuang . n
GlobalHealthAsiaPacific . com JUNE 2021
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