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Preventing Inefficiencies With Telehealth

Jonathon Hockenberry

South Piedmont Community College

ENG-112: Writing/Research in the Discipline

Tammy Frailly

November 3rd, 2024

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Medical offices and clinics are known for long wait times and a lack of open appointment

slots. The primary reason for this is medical inefficiencies, these include appointments taking

longer than planned for, doctors and patients running late, or emergencies. I propose that doctors

offices adopt telehealth not just as an option but as the primary way of doing appointments.

Telehealth would allow doctors to cut down on medical inefficiencies and save patients a lot of

time. Additionally, it can help to save money, reduce sickness, and provide medical care to a

larger group of people. While some concerns do exist with telehealth like internet/device issues

and worse medical diagnoses the pros outweigh the cons. Telehealth can be implemented by

individual doctors offices and clinics by locating a telehealth vendor such as zoom or facetime

and setting up a telehealth system with them.

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Have you ever sat around a doctor's office for a while and wondered why it is taking so

long to be seen? Or have you gotten to a doctors appointment 15-20 minutes late only to be told

they can’t see you even though you would likely have had to wait that long anyways. The reason

for this happening is what is known as appointment scheduling inefficiencies. These

inefficiencies arise from the small issues that happen on a day to day basis within a doctors office

or clinic. An example would be a patient having a 30 minute long appointment but it taking 45 to

deal with their issues. Another example would be any kind of emergency happening where a

patient needs to be seen immediately. For most people these kinds of delays are inconveniences

but to some it can cost them hours of work or force them to reschedule an appointment and waste

more time. A potential fix for this already exists and was actually put into heavy use only a few

years ago. That fix is telehealth or delivering healthcare using telecommunications. During the

pandemic many offices were forced to adopt a telehealth model to reduce the risk of Covid

spreading. You could get into a facetime meeting with a doctor and get your symptoms

diagnosed or prescriptions refilled. In the years following the pandemic many offices have

returned back to traditional appointments with a few offering some telehealth appointments. I

propose that we move from traditional appointments back to telehealth as the standard for

medical appointments. To implement this doctors offices can follow the American Medical

Association guidebook for establishing telehealth. This would include finding a telehealth vendor

such as zoom and ensuring their insurance will cover telehealth from a legal standpoint. This

change will help to reduce pollution, save money for both patients and doctors, and allow more

people access to timely medical care.

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Telehealth as stated before was pretty popular during covid as people wanted to avoid

getting sick. During this time we also got a lot of new data about telehealth as it hadn’t been put

into wide use before. According to a survey by the American Medical Association (Henry 2023)

“diagnoses between in-person appointments and telehealth appointments match up nearly 90

percent of the time” (paras.4-5). This is important because one of the main things people are

concerned about when it comes to telehealth is less accurate diagnoses. However as we can see

the diagnoses match up extremely often. This means telehealth is not worse medically than

in-person appointments. Additionally a study from JMIR publications ( Muschol et. al. 2022)

found that both patients and doctors were more satisfied with telehealth appointments as opposed

to in-person appointments.(pg 1). This study shows that people in general do prefer telehealth to

in-person appointments. Another thing to note is that telehealth can be an option for those who

do not normally have access to local healthcare such as those who live in rural areas.

Implementing this telehealth proposal would be comparatively inexpensive and time

efficient but the cost will scale with the size of the system that needs to move to telehealth.

Medical offices wanting to adopt telehealth should consult the American Medical Associations

digital health implementation handbook for how to properly implement telehealth. After

consulting this handbook offices should look into what their system will need and what it may

cost to implement an effective telehealth system. After determining exactly what kind of

telehealth options they require the office should reach out to a telehealth vendor such as zoom or

facetime and form an agreement with them. There is another aspect that should be considered

and that is regulation. Healthcare regulation is tricky so offices should be especially careful

before implementing telehealth to ensure that they are not violating any regulations such as
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HIPAA. According to an article by (cleaver road) the implementation of a telehealth system will

cost around 5,000 to 50,000 dollars depending on the size of the medical office and the number

of doctors and patients. Additionally there are some hardware and recurring costs to consider.

Hardware costs can cost you around 50-300 dollars per user monthly or around 500-1000 dollars

as a one time purchase. This hardware would include specialized devices, computers, and a

secure internet connection. Additionally the cost of the telehealth services monthly would be

about 25-300 dollars per user. A key thing to note is that per user means the number of doctors

and nurses using telehealth on a daily basis, not the patient. While this cost does seem pretty high

to a normal person for a medical practice this cost is much more manageable when compared to

how much they bring in. Additionally there are government programs that can cover part of the

cost. Telehealth isn’t just a money sink; however, the industry is valued at around 42 billion

dollars this year according to a market analysis report by Grand View Research (2024). and it is

projected to grow more as time goes on. While this proposal has plenty of pros it does have a few

potential issues.

Telehealth has had an undeniable positive effect on the healthcare industry, from helping

people get access to medical care when otherwise impossible to allowing people to continue

being safe during a pandemic. But there are a few issues that arise when using telehealth that

may impact this proposal. According to the National Academics press (2013) the primary issues

are regulation and technology. Healthcare is incredibly complex from a regulation standpoint,

there are a large number of different regulations and rules that must be followed. This means that

you have to be very careful when implementing telehealth as you need to adhere to all of these

various regulations or risk serious fines. The other issue is technology on both sides, telehealth

relies on someone knowing how to set it up and having a stable internet connection. Not
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everyone knows how to set up facetime or zoom on their devices and for some people this can be

very difficult. Additionally, we all have issues with the internet from time to time and this can

seriously impact your ability to get telehealth. Some people do not have access to a stable

internet connection especially in a private enough area to discuss medical information.

In conclusion, Telehealth is a feasible solution for the myriad of appointment

inefficiencies that many of us face on a daily basis. By having medical clinics and offices go

through the AMA handbook and find a telehealth vendor they can effectively implement

telehealth in their office. Telehealth would offer various positive effects to both patients and

physicians from saving money to improving the number of patients that can be seen, to providing

medical care to those who would not normally have access to it.
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References

‌Altynpara, E., & Khodukina, K. (2024, April 17). Cost of Telehealth Implementation in 2024:

In-Depth Guide. Cleveroad Inc. - Web and App Development Company.

[Link]

Board on Health Care Services, & Institute of Medicine. (2012). Challenges in Telehealth.

[Link]; National Academies Press (US).

[Link] /

Henry, T. (2023, December 20). 74% of physicians work in practices that offer telehealth.

American Medical Association.

[Link]

er-telehealth

Muschol, J., Heinrich, M., Hess, C., Knapp, G., Repp, H., Schneider, H., Thormann, U., Uhlar,

J., Unzeitig, K., & Gissel, C. (2022). Assessing Telemedicine Efficiency in Follow-up

Care With Video Consultations for Patients in Orthopedic and Trauma Surgery in

Germany: Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(7),

e36996. [Link]

U.S. Telehealth Market Size | Industry Analysis Report, 2022. (n.d.).

[Link].

[Link]