Cold and flu can be rough on everyone, including the patients and the providers both. A smart-telehealth strategy and the right virtual care platform can help sail through the difficult times relatively smoothly.

The 2017-2018 flu season marked one of the worst epidemics in the history of American healthcare. Little did we know that the 2019 coronavirus pandemic will add another catastrophic event to the healthcare landscape. Today, with the 2019-2020 flu season in full swing, the healthcare systems, and medical practices are plagued with the intense problem of an onslaught of patients walking the door with cold, cough, and flu symptoms. What aggravates the situation is the coinciding of the flu season with the novel coronavirus crisis.

Healthcare providers are presented with numerous challenges. These include controlling the contagious spread of the coronavirus, protecting the fragile populations from flu and coronavirus, and managing the increased workload and the continually increasing physician shortage. As a response, healthcare systems are continually reminding the patients about CDC’s flu shot recommendations and setting up clinics to facilitate patients in acquiring these vaccinations. They are investing equal effort in educating patient communities about the outbreak conditions, ordering extra supplies, and staffing up for the increasing number of patients.

Fortunately, virtual care has emerged as a plausible solution to address the situation. Here’s how!

Telehealth Limits the Exposure and Spread of the Virus

Healthcare providers are increasingly investing in offering virtual care to deal with this challenging time of the year. They encourage the sick patients to stay at home and see doctors from the comfort of their homes instead of taking a trip to the retail clinic down the street. By doing this, providers can reduce the number of in-person visits and contain the spread of the virus to others, especially the high-risk populations. At the same time, virtual care offers efficiency and cost incentives for the providers when treating high-demand but low-acuity conditions such as flu. They have spare time to meet the ever-growing demands of the patients, while also considerably reducing physician burnout.

Telehealth Expands the Provider Outreach

Viruses are not picky when it comes to bringing down patients. They hit people of all races and ethnicity and all socioeconomic backgrounds. However, socially deprived and previously underserved communities are the hardest hit. This is essentially because of their already limited access to care, financial restrictions to seek care, and mobility restrictions to travel down long hours to see a doctor in the city. Telehealth is godsent for such patient communities, expanding provider reach to serve them. The majority of the people in these communities have a smartphone and a working broadband connection, and that is what that’s needed for a telehealth encounter.

Virtual platforms also provide meaningful data on outbreaks by geographic regions. This plays a vital role in contact tracing of the patients with the virus, and containing the spread to other members of the community.

Remote Working Facility

The ability to work remotely is perhaps one of the most widely celebrated benefits of telehealth. While encouraging the patients to stay at home to limit the spread of the virus, telehealth allows the providers to work remotely and restrict their exposure. Working remotely from home allows them for more rest time, while also saving up traveling and office-set up times. This time can then be diverted towards more profitable tasks such as seeing the more patients.

Boosting Efficiency

It’s no wonder that the flu season exacerbates stress and burnout amongst the healthcare providers. Imagine a two-fold impact when the flu season coincides with the global coronavirus pandemic. Seeing low-acuity patients through telehealth can potentially enhance the efficiency of the providers ten times over.

Cold and flu can be rough on everyone, including the patients and the providers both. A smart-telehealth strategy and the right virtual care platform can help sail through the difficult times relatively smoothly.