Why Telemedicine/Telehealth for Diabetes?
During this coronavirus epidemic, everybody is now looking into telemedicine/telehealth. Most people have some understanding of telemedicine. Yet a lot of people do not know how to do it. At SugarMDs we look at telemedicine differently. For us, telemedicine is not just seeing the diabetic patient on the video. The basic functions of the SugarMDs telemedicine system include remote monitoring of patient’s blood glucose data, treatment for type 1, and type 2 diabetes regardless of the device they use to monitor or treat their diabetes. We are also instrumental in helping in self-management actions.
How can a diabetic doctor see me remotely?
We also provide remote care from diabetes doctors to diabetic patients anytime, anywhere, instantly. We always value the process of being in touch with the patient via remote monitoring and treatment systems.
Patients can text, email or video chat with their doctor or diabetes coach at any time.
What is the difference between telehealth and telemedicine?
Telehealth refers to a broad range of health services. It can include meetings, webinars, and conferences held by health professionals. On the other hand, telemedicine refers to the physician-patient relationship only.
Telemedicine uses electronic communications and software to provide clinical services to patients without an in-person visit. We use telemedicine mobile health technology for follow-up visits, management of chronic conditions, medication management, specialist consultation, and a host of other clinical services such as diabetes education and training.
We also provide a remote live for monitoring as well as intervention.
That separates sugar MDs from other services. We do not just monitor you, but we also always intervene in real-time to keep you on track.
How long has telemedicine been practiced?
Telemedicine through telephone and video technology has been in use since the 1960s. Yet, in the past several years, technology has become more advanced, and cell phone and internet use have become popular. So, there has been ai rapid need for technological modalities to facilitate health care delivery. SugarMDs was born to meet the demand in the diabetic population.
Future of Telemedicine In the United States
The use of telemedicine is increasing. According to recent research, out of 184 health care facilities, 88% believed that they would invest in telehealth soon, 98% thought that it could improve their competitiveness. Recent studies have shown that telehealth interventions are effective in improving clinical outcomes and decreasing hospital admission. Telemedicine does that with excellent patient satisfaction as well. So, telemedicine for diabetes has continued to increase in demand. It shows promise in expanding access to health care, promoting OnDemand disease management, and facilitating in-between health care visits with remote monitoring.
Telemedicine for diabetes and remote glucose monitoring is particularly important in treating diabetes. As compared to other diseases, diabetes requires interpretation and responses to many types of data such high or low blood glucose, blood pressure, etc. that patients can be measure in the home. Since SugarMDs has the technology for communication, data management, and decision support is available to all patients with diabetes.
Hopefully, payers and regulatory bodies will soon become comfortable with this fantastic home care system. We envision that diabetes telemedicine will become increasingly popular. Telemedicine for diabetes promises to become a novel tool for diabetes. Health care providers will re-discover ways to communicate with patients to improve the quality and lower the costs of health care.
Why is Telemedicine for diabetes so necessary for the healthcare system?
First, DM management worldwide is far from being on target. Less than 50% of all persons with diabetes have their A1c on target. On the contrary, the increase in diabetes prevalence, population aging, and health care costs are not going down. With the current shortage of healthcare providers and especially the worsening lack of diabetes specialists/endocrinologists problem will only worsen.
On the other hand, the widespread adoption of mobile smartphones and computers in everyday life is providing an excellent opportunity to improve the delivery of diabetes care by enhancing and optimizing communication among patients, health care providers, and health care systems. Some studies found significant savings among patients who used a telehealth program. Some were associated with spending reductions of approximately 7.7-13.3 percent ($312-$542) per person per quarter. These results prove that carefully designed and implemented care management and telehealth programs such as SugarMDs can help reduce health care spending and that such programs merit continued attention by insurance companies and Medicare.
How can telemedicine help patients with diabetes?
There are four main goals for using telemedicine to collect, transmit, analyze, and discuss. Not only that, SugarMDs doctors and coaches respond to medical data. SugarMDs do not send automated messaged or robots but use real educators and doctors to review medical data. These reasons all relate to promoting greater effectiveness in the interaction between the patient and the diabetes provider. Telemedicine can facilitate the achievement of individualized treatment goals by training patients to manage their own disease.
Telemedicine for diabetes also helps to manage populations without mobilizing them to the physician offices. Telehealth for diabetes by SugarMDs provides access to decision support tools with oversight from physicians.
Secondly, SugarMDs telemedicine technology allows accurate collection of data, accurate input of data, verification of data accuracy, and a process to correct the data patients enter in the SugarMDs app. Moreover,
SugarMDs telemedicine platform also is designed to process clinical outcome measures and patient satisfaction. Why telemedicine for diabetes is not yet very popular? There are a few barriers over full implementation.
Barriers to Telemedicine for Diabetes
The greatest barriers to the adoption of telemedicine are systemic. One of the main problems is inadequate or nonexistent reimbursement. Most health plans do not cover telemedicine encounters, which are intended to result in fewer patient office visits and fewer hospitalizations. Yet, the SugarMDs platform promises cost savings by actively working with pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies and patients to reduce the cost. By reducing hospitalizations and ER visits, telemedicine should be celebrated.
Instead, today, telemedicine practitioners are forced to practice concierge medicine. Telemedicine and remote monitoring should be a right, not a privilege.
Cost Savings with Telemedicine
In a capitated environment, such as government-run health plans, they all should be investing in chronic continuous care to achieve better outcomes with fewer outpatient visits and fewer hospitalizations.
SugarMDs can practice telemedicine because we spent time and money in developing an electronic medical record and remote monitoring as well as communication tools. Summary SugarMDs is going to be a pioneer in delivering remote diabetes monitoring and treatment. We will show how and why telemedicine and remote management is so important.
Our patients are delighted because they do not have to drop everything to see the doctor. They do know what diabetes care team is always watching them. We save them hundreds of dollars monthly. They enjoy stopping insulin or other diabetic medications as they continue to work with our team.
If you want to be part of this legacy, call or email us to find out more about our state-of-the-art diabetes remote monitoring and treatment system.
