State of Telehealth

Date: May 2 2022

Summary: An overall summary and review of the state of telehealth based off literature

Keywords: ##bibliography #telehealth #care #digital #chronic #acute #conditions #wait #time #archive

Bibliography

E. R. Dorsey and E. J. Topol, “State of Telehealth,” N Engl J Med, vol. 375, no. 2, pp. 154–161, Jul. 2016, doi: 10.1056/NEJMra1601705.

Table of Contents

This was a systematic review of the state of telehealth using literature.

Definitions

• Telehealth - remote healthcare delivery via telecommunication tools with or without video

Goals of Telehealth

• For patients:

- Increase access to care

Current Issues with Care

• Booking a 20 minute physician appointment takes an average of 20 days [1]

• Traveling to an appointment and waiting often takes nearly 2 hours [2]

Opportunities for Telehealth

• Chronic condition patients

- Elderly Americans 
	- ~2 million elderly that are homebound [3]
	- Medical home will be patient's home for best patient-centered care [4]

• Acute care patients

- Stroke [5]
- Pneumonia [6]

Challenges to Telehealth

• Reimbursement issues

- Eligible for clinical facilities where shortage of health professionals (get citation)

• Lack of socialization

- The digital divide [7]
	- Difference of access to telehealth based on:
		- Geography 
		- Social factors
	- Worst for the elderly
		- Only 58% of persons > 65 years old use Internet [8]

How To Cite

Zelko, Jacob. State of Telehealth. https://jacobzelko.com/05022022144808-state-of-telehealth. May 2 2022.

References:

[1] Merritt Hawkins, “Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicaid and Medicare Acceptance Rates,” Merritt Hawkins, 2014.

[2] K. N. Ray, A. V. Chari, J. Engberg, M. Bertolet, and A. Mehrotra, “Disparities in time spent seeking medical care in the United States,” JAMA Intern. Med., vol. 175, no. 12, pp. 1983–1986, 2015.

[3] K. A. Ornstein et al., “Epidemiology of the homebound population in the United States,” JAMA Intern. Med., vol. 175, no. 7, pp. 1180–1186, 2015.

[4] N. Herendeen and P. Deshpande, “Telemedicine and the patient-centered medical home,” Pediatr. Ann., vol. 43, no. 2, pp. e28–e32, 2014.

[5] A. Itrat et al., “Telemedicine in prehospital stroke evaluation and thrombolysis: Taking stroke treatment to the doorstep,” JAMA Neurol., vol. 73, no. 2, pp. 162–168, 2016.

[6] W. T. Summerfelt, S. Sulo, A. Robinson, D. Chess, and K. Catanzano, “Scalable hospital at home with virtual physician visits: Pilot study,” Am J Manag Care, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 675–84, 2015.

[7] P. Norris et al., Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge university press, 2001.

[8] A. Perrin and M. Duggan, “Americans’ internet access: 2000-2015,” 2015.

Discussion: