Telehealth Services Getting a Clean Bill of Health from Patients and Physicians

Since the pandemic, people stayed in their homes and avoided public places. They shunned restaurants and stores, making home delivery and curbside pickup the “new thing.”

Health services also evolved to meet the “new normalcy” with the popularity of telehealth services.

According to a report at the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 1,629,000 telehealth encounters occurred in the first three months of 2020, compared with approximately 1,084,000 telehealth encounters during the same period in 2019. That is an increase of 50 percent.

In week 13 of the analysis, telehealth visits increased 154 percent compared to 2019 and emergency department visits in the last three weeks of March 2020 decreased significantly.

Ironically, 93 percent of those telehealth encounters were for conditions other than COVID-19, but those encounters increased from 5.5 percent to 16.2 percent during the last three weeks of March 2020.

A whopping 69 percent of those telehealth patients were managed from home.

Locally, the Madison Crossings senior living community opening this summer will provide telehealth services for its residents.

Jesse Marinko, founder and CEO of Phoenix Senior Living, the company that will be managing operations at Madison Crossings, said that when they did their models, they were not thinking about coronavirus.

“We are big believers in telehealth, and we think telemedicine would be an assistance to nurses and can be done effectively without forcing nurse practitioners or physicians to leave their environment, while at the same time, reducing the need for our residents to leave our community,” Marinko said.

“We were just thinking about how we could not have our seniors leave the community if they don’t want to, and obviously with the global pandemic, it was a natural benefit that we had.”

Residents can keep their own doctors, although Marinko said his company will partner with local doctors at Madison Crossings if an adult child seeks a new physician or specialist for their loved one.

“Because of partner practices, some doctors prefer to just come to our community and see the resident within our onsite doctor’s office,” he said. “It’s a mixed bag. Most general physicians are fine with telehealth, although sometimes specialists prefer to lay hands and eyes on the patient.”

He said nurse practitioners have a different regimen from doctors, but telehealth is still in the early stages of adoption among doctors and medical physicians.

Gail Prentice, Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner at Huntsville Hospital’s Physician Care at Madison, said they had discussed offering telehealth services prior to COVID-19, but had not made the transition.

“Since COVID, we have been doing quite a bit of telehealth and we like it,” she said. “It keeps patients safe at home and they get a one-on-one conversation with us and I think they really like it, so we plan to continue offering it.

“We go over their medications and their medical history.  If the patient has had lab work done, we do follow-ups to go over their numbers. We can prescribe medications and talk about any symptoms they are having …”

Prentice said a lot of older patients are not comfortable with Zoom; some are more familiar with Facetime because many of them have it on their phone but by far they are more comfortable with a phone consultation.

“Any hands-on assessments however require a visual connection,” said Prentice.

By far, the most modern approach or, perhaps it would be better described as a renewed old approach to telehealth service offerings, is that of Dr. Jill Howard at Sweet Home Telehealth & Primary Care.

Howard is a doctor of nursing practice, a little higher than a nurse practitioner. She worked in an array urgent care and primary care facilities.

“We opened in November 2020 after I was seeing long lines of people, standing out in the cold wanting to have COVID testing done or needing refills for their medicines,” she said. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way to do this and keep people safe so they’re not spreading any infection or acquiring any either.”

Not only does Sweet Home offer telehealth services and act as a tele-doc to refill prescriptions, but Howard does in-home COVID-19 testing and makes house calls.

“We want to keep you as safe as possible, so I took the telehealth service concept and put a spin on it. The doctor comes to you and that is what our patients like the best about our service,” she said. “We do antigen testing, antibody testing and everything your normal primary care doctors office can do, including urine analysis, testing for pregnancy, testing for Strep, flu, mono. And we do injectables for medicines and prescribe medicines, so you don’t have to leave your house.”

Howard agrees with Prentice that many of the older generation are used to seeing their doctor in person, so when it comes to the technology aspect, they are shy about their information going over the Internet.

“You have to look at what your patient population is wanting and make those changes in order to still stay relevant, so that’s why I took telehealth and said, okay, if the person does not want to do a telehealth session, if they really want to see me, I can come to their house,” she said.

“I see telehealth and even coming to your home, lasting a long time and it will grow in popularity.”

There are several other telehealth platforms available as well.

“Many physicians like Doctor on Demand,” said Marinko from Madison Crossings. “Most patients already have access to Facetime or Zoom, but we provide an open source platform that meets the physician’s needs.

“All types of teleconferencing have been widely adopted because of COVID and I don’t think it is going away. In fact, it is changing how offices work.”