In order to provide your residents living in your assisted living facility with the best care it is wise to have all kinds of ways to help keep them healthy and feeling their best. Telemedicine is a useful tool that all clinical heath care facilities need because it helps eliminate distance barriers that can help assist with particular medical services via video chat, email, smart phone chat and texting.

What are the benefits? 

The benefits of telemedicine in assisted living facilities are countless. This form of medicine is capable of providing services such as:

• Providing medical services to medicinal professions and patients at a distances.
• Allows medical professionals to communicate with each other in order to provide more assistance to residents that need critical or emergency care in a pinch.
• Allows patients that live far away to communicate with their health care providers and still receive the care they need without having to physically go into the doctors office.
• Allows medical professionals to hold  health seminars and other educational classes via video chat.
• This form of medicine can help eliminate the possible transmission of an infectious diseases or parasites between a medical staff and patients in a major or minor health outbreak.
• Allows medical data to be shared between the medical staff, assisted living facility and patients without compromising patients privacy.

What forms of telemedicine are there?

There are three forms of telemedicine that are used to provide care to patients. Those three forms are:

• Store-and-Forward: This involves allows doctors to send medical data, images and binominals too each other to help come up with a diagnoses for a patient.
• Remote Monitoring: This form allows a patient to self-monitor and test themselves to help diagnose and manage a chronic disease, but providing the data and home test to doctors immediately after it is taken so they can make a diagnoses and provide treatment if necessary.
• Interactive: This form provides real-time interactions between patient and a medicinal professional via phone conversation, video chat or through a home visit.

End Notes to Keep in Mind 

If your assisted living facility desires to up the services and medical care they can provide their residents, telemedicine services is a great next step to take. Having all resources available to keep your residents happy and healthy will help keep your facility running smoothly and professionally.