Telecardiology is one of the largest growing fields in the telemedicine industry. If you think your health practice could use some help with their cardiology patients, here’s what to look for when hiring telecardiology services.
How far away does your typical patient live? Do they have a cardiologist nearby? If you’re like many rural areas, probably not.
Their local clinic has an ECG machine, which is what you need for telecardiology services.
Learn how getting into this new technology development can help patients and potentially save their lives below.
What is Telecardiology?
If you have patients in rural areas or don’t have a specialist nearby, it’s hard on your patients and on you. How can you provide them with the monitoring they need if it takes them hours to see you?
The answer is telecardiology. Telecardiology is a development that lets patient’s cardiology devices communicate with doctors in real time.
If their pacemaker changes pace or reverses, the doctor who’s miles away get’s a notification. They can communicate with doctors in the area, who aren’t specialists and keep an eye on the patient’s progress.
All in all, it’s adding a new channel of communication. Before it was patient to doctor or doctor to doctor. Now it can be patient and device to doctor, which opens up a whole new vein of options.
What are Its Uses?
Now that you have an idea of how helpful this new technology is, let’s look at specific situational uses.
Second Opinions
Instead of the patient needing to drive to see another doctor if you want a second opinion, you can send their monitoring information over. It doesn’t take up as much of the patient or the doctor’s time.
You both can get an answer faster and eliminate travel time.
Night Hours
If you have a cardiologist who’s only in sometimes, you can ask another clinic to help out. By having them keep an eye on the monitoring information, the person is still getting the supervision they need.
You’ll have to compensate the other doctor, but it’s much less costly compared to hiring them to stay overnight.
Teaching and Training
If you have recordings of someone’s monitor in a crisis situation, it’s good for teaching medical students. You can have them watch the feed and ask what they’d do in that situation.
Alternatively, watching the feed is a good job for more advanced interns or residents. As long as they have someone they can go to if need be, it’s a good learning exercise and a good way to reduce a Doctor’s task list.
Telecardiology Services
Bringing telecardiology into your clinic is a great choice. It improves safety, closes health access gaps, and gives people more peace of mind.
Don’t know how to bring telecardiology into your clinic? We have many different solutions based around bringing services like these to healthcare facilities. Contact us today to learn more.
