4 Ways Video Conferencing Is Improving Health Care

Video conferencing is one of the most exciting trends to hit the health care field in recent years. Thanks to video conferencing, health care providers can do a better job and patients can become more educated about their health. There are many ways video conferencing is improving health care.

Facilitating Collaboration Between Doctors

In the past, collaboration was limited to phone calls or written correspondence. Thanks to video conferencing, doctors are able to hold face-to-face conversations to discuss patient situations and potential treatments and diagnoses. In some cases, doctors will even video conference with each other during treatment or medical procedures like surgery, to determine how well the patient is responding and provide real-time updates and advice.

Easing The Burden On High Volume Providers

In some areas, like military bases or public schools, a relatively small number of health care providers are responsible for offering care to a large number of patients. One of the ways video conferencing is improving health care is by offering some relief to these providers.

Video conferencing can be used to treat some of these patients that require simple checkups, while in person care from providers can be reserved for serious cases that require larger blocks of time from doctors and their staff.

Making It Easier To Get A Second Opinion

Patients and their family members often choose to get a second opinion from another physician after they receive a diagnosis from the first health care provider they see. This can be difficult if there are not many physicians located in a patient’s area, especially if they are looking for a second opinion on a specialized issue that not many doctors are well-trained in.

With video conferencing, someone that is looking for another opinion about their medical treatment can get this opinion right from the comfort of their own home or from their primary care provider, making it easy to get more information about options for treatment.

Improving Internal Operation For Health Care Systems

Video conferencing can be especially important for operators of large networks that have several facilities in different cities and states. Doctors and nurses at these kinds of facilities usually have a need to exchange information. In some cases, doctors will travel to different facilities over the course of a typical work week so that they can provide services to more patients.

These health care situations are very suitable for video conferencing within an organization because they allow for communication without physical travel.

With the tools that go along with video conferencing, such as file sharing databases and messaging tools, doctors and their staff can share patient records and other kinds of information that needs to be transmitted from one location to another. Leveraging video conferencing in this way could even result in a reduction in the amount of trips that a healthcare provider is required to take to different facilities and locations within a healthcare network.

It is clear that video conferencing is a trend that is here to stay in health care. Nearly 9 out of every 10 healthcare executives believe that in the next ten years, telemedicine will transform the health care system in the United States. The above benefits and other ways video conferencing is improving health care should serve to make that transformation a positive one.

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