StemCell Therapy

November 07, 2019 -Telehealth services are proving equal to in-person care in studies all across the country, but only if all the stars are aligned.

The latest example comes from Alaska, where a program launched for people living with rheumatoid arthritis found that virtual visits compared just as favorably to in-person care, as long as both provider and patient were familiar with telehealth.

The telehealth service also proved popular with patients who deal with frequent flare-ups, as it offered them a more convenient means of getting in front of a care provider.

When offered as an option for rheumatology care, video telemedicine was more likely to be used by RA patients with higher disease activity, more positive perceptions of telemedicine, and whose physicians used telemedicine more often, the researchers, led by Elizabeth D. Ferucci, of Community Health Services and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, wrote in the August edition of Arthritis Care & Research.

The intimation is that telehealth has to be familiar in order to be embraced. And that means more people providers and patients have to be introduced to telehealth in order to become familiar with its benefits.

For their study, Ferucci and her colleagues gathered data from 122 Alaskans being treated for RA in the Alaska Tribal Health System between August of 2016 and March of 2018. The participants were given a choice of in-person care at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage (with an out-of-state rheumatologist participating via video) or virtual visits.

According to the researchers, those using virtual visits met more often with their care providers. In addition, they had a more positive perception of telehealth, and they were seeing a rheumatologist who used telemedicine more frequently.

Also, both groups indicated they preferred to see a specialist in person for follow-up care 61 percent of those who used telehealth and 74 percent of those who visited the hospital. But those within the telehealth group also said their virtual care experience was just as good as in-person care.

The study points out that telehealth is embraced by those who have already tried it, but isnt high on the to-do list for those who havent used it yet. That falls in line with the many surveys that find telehealth to be popular in concept but not in use.

See the original post here:
In Alaska, Telehealth is Popular With Those Who Have Already Used It - mHealthIntelligence.com

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