Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Virtual Healthcare Delivery

Why Telehealth and Virtual Healthcare Systems are More Important in the Age of COVID
Introduction
This firm can add value to a healthcare system like the VA or DoD healthcare facilities by updating them and bringing them into line with 21st century technologies that facilitate virtual healthcare delivery. Telehealth has been in existence for decades, but it is only now that healthcare organizations are beginning to realize the need for telehealth systems. The world of COVID 19 has changed the way partners, patients and healthcare providers think about healthcare delivery. This paper will describe the effect of COVID 19 on virtual healthcare delivery and show why this firm can assist the VA in upgrading its systems.
COVID 19
The coronavirus panic that began in 2019 in China, quickly overtook the West and led to a global economic lockdown from March 2020 onward. Restaurants, movie theaters, schools, churches, parks, playgrounds—all closed to prevent the spread of the virus and reduce the risk of COVID 19 infection. Hospitals and healthcare facilities also had to reduce operations, delaying non-essential surgeries and procedures for months while only taking the most serious cases. As a result, many patients were left without doctors and nurses, unable to see a healthcare provider.
The novel coronavirus responsible for infecting people with the COVID 19 disease has been considered highly infectious and dangerous for certain individuals (particularly the elderly). It represents a new form of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS), which is essentially a lung issue. Breathing in the virus or spreading it around to others through person-to-person contact has been seen as a major risk, which is why social distancing efforts have been put into place in most countries (BMJ, 2020). Except in Sweden where the government allowed people to go about their business as usual, nearly every nation in the West has implemented some form of social distancing protocol and mask-wearing policy to prevent the spread of the virus. However, understanding the disease is complicated, as autopsy have shown that people with pre-existing conditions are most at risk, and the biggest risk factor among pre-existing conditions are coronary heart disease and asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which put individuals at higher risk of death (Hansen, 2020).
The Risk for Healthcare Settings
Leaders in the healthcare industry have issued warnings that health care facilities could potentially become hot spots for infection. With too many patients and visitors and workers coming into contact with one another, the fear of infection rates rising has been addressed by governors, mayors and members of the President’s health team tasked with overseeing the management of the pandemic. Super spreaders, identified as younger individuals who show no symptoms of the virus yet are capable of spreading it more vulnerable populations, have been especially feared. Hospitals and health care facilities have thus attempted to keep the flow of traffic to a minimum. By reducing the number of people coming in the doors, these settings have helped to prevent the spread of COVID 19. However, they have also reduced the number of patients who can see their care providers.
Since it is still unclear exactly how the virus spreads from person to person, i.e., whether transmission occurs through water droplets, via aerosol transmission, through bodily function like sneezing or coughing, through direct contact, or whether it can be obtained from touching surfaces where the disease can live (BMJ, 2020). Aside from the question of where the virus came from, what is still debated, too, is how the virus infects a person. It is believed that the primary method of transmission is small droplets that contain a high viral load and that are transmitted from coughing, sneezing or talking to others. Some have speculated that the virus can be airborne and transmitted simply from breathing the same air as those who are infected. This speculation was largely born from the fact that so many passengers on cruise ships contracted the virus over a short period of time. It has also been speculated that the virus penetrates the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and thus takes control of the host through the lungs where the ACE2 receptors are most abundant (BMJ, 2020).
Solution
All of this means that health care facilities have been put on red alert and now must be hyper-vigilant so as to ensure maximum safety, especially for elderly patients. Instead of bringing patients into health care settings where they risk being exposed to the virus, the solution proposed herein is to use virtual healthcare delivery to treat patients. What exactly is virtual healthcare delivery?
As Care Innovations (2020) explains, Virtual healthcare delivery simply means that instead of person-to-person healthcare visit between doctors and patients, virtual visits “take place between patients and clinicians via communications technology.” In other words, health care facilities use “video and audio connectivity that allows ‘virtual’ meetings to occur in real time, from virtually any location” (Care Innovations, 2020).
Virtual healthcare systems allow healthcare providers to monitor patient situations from afar and to for specialists to oversee procedures from remote locations. Virtual healthcare enables healthcare conferences and meetings to take place safely and for patients to get the contact with their doctors that they require without having to leave the home or travel to a hospital.
Why Our Firm Can Help
Our firm has years of experience installing telehealth systems and virtual healthcare devices in hospitals and homes around the world. It has been our number one mission to bring the healthcare industry into the 21st century so that time and space barriers can be overcome. The way to overcome these barriers is to use the digital technology of today. There is no need for patients and doctors and nurses to have to risk their health in order to give or receive healthcare. Virtual healthcare delivery allows patients to discuss with care providers their symptoms and issues and allows care providers to assess patients easily. Patients can manage their healthcare plan online, receive prescriptions in the mail, and tend to their health management in a way that does not require them to leave the home and risk exposure to COVID.
Installing virtual healthcare delivery systems is part of the broader work of telehealth. A facility that already has a telehealth network or infrastructure in place will likely not need much of an upgrade, but a facility that is woefully behind in this advanced form of medicine will need to invest in significant infrastructural changes. For a hospital or health care facility that seeks to be relevant in the post-COVID world, some changes will likely need to be made across the board, but none will be more important than making sure that virtual healthcare delivery systems are in place, are operable and are ready to go.
Our firm will install, test, maintain, and train staff on how to use virtual healthcare delivery systems. Installation can be completed quickly within a matter of days. Instruments can be tested immediately, and staff can be trained on these systems over the course of 2 weeks. Maintaining these instruments is relatively non-intrusive, and most hospitals and healthcare facilities have in-house IT teams that could easily manage these systems themselves. However, this firm does offer maintenance subscriptions for an annual price.
This firm is dedicated to giving top of the line delivery and ensuring that healthcare providers are safe and free from risk. At the same time it recognizes that patients need help with understanding their symptoms. Virtual healthcare delivery ensures that patients and doctors can come together using the Internet, have a discussion, engage in monitoring, and use the technology of today to treat the issues that healthcare patients have.
Conclusion
To counter the risk posed by COVID 19, it is recommended that the healthcare system of the VA be updated to allow for an integrated virtual healthcare delivery package. This firm can easily and quickly install an affordable virtual healthcare delivery system. The firm will not only install it but will also train staff on how to use with a 2 week virtual course. It will also test and maintain the equipment to ensure that it is working appropriately. When it comes to health, no company is more engaged on the front lines than ours. We bring the best of digital technology that the 21st century has to offer to the health care workers of today. The solution to the coronavirus scare is virtual healthcare delivery.
References
BMJ. (2020). COVID 19. Retrieved from https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/3000168/aetiology
Care Innnovations. (2020). What is Virtual Healthcare, and How Does It Fit into Telehealth? Retrieved from https://news.careinnovations.com/blog/what-is-virtual-healthcare-how-does-it-fit-into-telehealth
Hansen, M. (2020). 12 Autopsy Cases Reveal TRUTH About How Patients Die From Coronavirus. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h8TIxeg1g