50% of Americans face some type of issue with their heart. This makes telecardiology critical for their care. Are you trying to figure out the benefits of telecardiology and how it will work in favor of your hospital?
In this article, we are going to list the benefits that come from using telecardiology.
This practice will help save you money as well as bring in new sources of revenue. It will also help to cut down on the time you have when it comes to delivering effective treatment to patients.
What is Telecardiology?
Before we talk about how this practice is beneficial for your hospital, we must explain it. Telecardiology and how it’s used is a way of communication that allows doctors to diagnose and treat heart disease.
The data provided to doctors is done using real-time electrocardiographic equipment. The equipment collects all the necessary information for treatment. For critical access hospitals to have access to this specialized data means that they have the required devices that record the information and telecommunicate it to the doctors.
Now that you know what telecardiology is and how it works with data transmission, we can now understand how the medical practice is beneficial to hospitals.
1. Can Provide Another Informed Opinion
When it comes to making the diagnosis in medicine often, it’s beneficial to have more than one opinion. The reason being is someone else may have a different perspective that the primary doctor may not have considered beforehand.
With the ability of another doctor in a different location to receive the data taken from the machine in real-time, it allows them to come up with an opinion about a possible prognosis without wasting time. This type of reporting could be the difference from making a mistake and it increases the chances of choosing the correct avenue of treatment.
2. Quicker Patient Communication
Often, patients may find themselves waiting for extended periods for test results. This is after the testing that they’ve undergone.
Yet, when telemedicine is being used, it cuts down on the time that it takes between testing. And cuts the time down for doctors’ communication with patients.
In the long run, patients will appreciate that they don’t have to wait as long. And they can begin treatment sooner if necessary.
3. Portability
Another benefit of using a telecardiology device is that they can move from one room to another. Or they can move closer to the patient for a more accurate test result.
Unlike other medical devices, telecardiology devices don’t need to take up a lot of space. This gives the doctors room that they need to work and act if the situation should take a turn.
4. Saves Lives
The difference between a patient dying and living in some cases comes down to the amount of time that it takes for the medical team to respond. Because the use of telemedicine devices delivers real-time information, it allows the doctors to act before it could be too late for the patient.
In healthcare, more machinery like this is needed because no illness, not even heart disease, will wait until the doctor can receive test results that may take hours to days to receive back from a medical lab.
5. Prepares Staff Ahead of Time
Telemedicine can be useful when medical staff is waiting to receive a patient and every second counts. It can help them get ahead of the life-threatening event before the patient has stepped foot into the hospital.
This is beneficial because instead of a patient being admitted to the hospital and waiting on data to be collected by staff, they will arrive, and staff will begin working on them. This time can be used to reduce the time that a patient waits to be taken back to surgery and can also help prevent further damage to the heart muscles.
6. Overnight Reporting
Has your hospital ever run into an issue where you need a cardiologist, but they’ve all left the hospital for the night? With the use of telemedicine solutions, having to wait and lose precious time because a cardiologist isn’t on duty is a thing of the past. These solutions make it possible for doctors to continue gathering valuable data overnight as the patient is resting in the hospital.
This is beneficial to the patient as well because patients aren’t fond of being woken up many times because a nurse or doctor needs to check on them and the various machines that they’re hooked up too.
7. Helps Improve Team Training
A hospital can only get better if they continue to receive informational training and teachings that will allow them to react correctly when it counts. The data that is collected from one of the devices can be used to train employees on how to read the data.
They should also be trained on the signs that the data may show a patient needs immediate care. When employees aren’t trained, it may cause them to deliver the wrong diagnosis and treatment.
Delivering the wrong diagnosis and treatment can cause loss of time that can prove critical for the patient. Having the data on hand can also be fantastic when you need to share the information with other staff members.
Instead of walking around with a chart to give to other staff members, you can have the data sent to them for evaluation once the machine has collected the information. Of course, the staff member being sent the data will need to have clearance to access it.
The Benefits of Telecardiology Are Many
There are many benefits of telecardiology that prove why this medical practice is here to stay. We hope that this article has helped explain the benefits of telecardiology for your critical access hospital implementing the practice.
If you’d like to learn more about telecardiology, contact us today and see what we can do for you!
