Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services which are provided to people through electronic means of communication and telecommunication technologies. It also allows the patients and the clinician contact, care, advice, medication, education, intervention, monitoring, and remote admissions.
Poll Conducted Shows That About 66% Of Americans Prefer Telehealth Services
Telemedicine is usually used as a synonym or sometimes used to represent the remote clinical services provided, such as diagnosis and monitoring. When the rural settings lack medical facilities, lack of mobility, lack of transportation, decreased funding, or lack of staff restrict access to care. These medical facilities provide distance-learnings, meetings, supervision, and presentations between the practitioners, online information and health management data, and health care systems.
Telehealth also provides different types of services, such as talking to your doctor live over the phone or video chat, sending and receiving messages through SMS or chatting online, using remote patient monitoring where the doctor can monitor you remotely, and might make use of ECG to gather the data.
Some of the benefits of having telehealthcare are limiting physical contact reduces everyone’s exposure to covid-19 infections, taking an online consultation can address the patient’s health issues and can have the consultation at the comfort of home, staying home can cut the costs of commuting, travel in bad weather, time off work, need for child care. This can also shorten the time of the medical health provider and expand to a range of access to specialists who live far away.
As per the new poll results that were conducted in the United States of America, many Americans have used telehealth and would turn to it for mental health care and many more reasons. As per the poll results of the American Psychological Association, the poll found that 38% of Americans used telehealth to consult with a health professional and the rates of these consultations have increased when compared with the rates which were in the fall, which was 31% back then. Out of all, it was found that 82% of Americans had used online consultation or teleconsultation during the start of the pandemic and it was mostly through video calls, and thirty-eight percent of the Americans used only phone calls to get the consultation done. The poll results show that the quick pivot to providing telehealth services at the start of the pandemic was to keep the continuous access of medical care for people in need. This poll shows the importance of telehealth going forward.
This telepsychiatry helps people who are facing barriers such as lack of transportation facility, inability to take time off work, or lack of medical facility or family responsibilities, as per the reports of APA President Dr. Vivian Pender. It also found the confidence in telehealth growing. As per the poll reports, the respondents were slightly more when compared to the last year and we can also say that telehealth can provide the same quality of medical help a person needs, and they would use telehealth for mental health services. In the poll, more than 66% of the people aged between 18 to 29 years of age said that they would go for telehealth when compared with 36% of senior citizens. A similar percentage which is 66% of Black respondents, Hispanic respondents, and White respondents, mentioned that they would use telehealth for mental care.
The survey also found that 57% of the respondents would consider using a support line or online chat when struggling with mental difficulty and anxiety, and 7% of them had surely done it before, and only 21% of them would not even consider doing it. An Online poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
