With one in five Americans living in rural areas, an estimated 60 million people have fewer options in their healthcare than the millions of people living in urban areas. Often, rural residents will put off seeking care because it’s an inconvenience to have to drive so far to the nearest healthcare provider. Fortunately, access to telemedicine solutions, such as teleradiology, can help them get the care they need.
Rural communities are also notoriously underserved because of limited budgets in their area healthcare facilities. Investing in the latest platforms can be too much of an expense. But with cloud-based technologies, putting down money on on-premise infrastructure is not the only option on the table.
Telehealth Growth
Even before the pandemic, which forced many providers to consider a telehealth option, telehealth was on the rise. One of the main drivers was the reduced cost of care through various telehealth options, but there is also the increasingly faster regulatory approval process to consider as well as the fact that telehealth improves patient engagement.
Telehealth solutions, while definitely an advantageous tool, haven’t always been without shortcomings. For example, some teleradiology solutions provide very little visibility into where the exam has gone, who is looking at it, where it is in the process and whether or not a priority can be shifted on a particular exam. There is no sense of control and there doesn’t seem to be any accountability in the process.
Some vendors, though, are getting it right. They’ve come up with a process where updates are easily made, priority shifts are not a problem and you always know where the exam is in the process. This is something OffSite Image Management has created with its solution – TeleRad360.
A “Rad” Solution
At OffSite Image Management, our solution’s workflow improvements is what has made it a star for healthcare providers in rural communities and even in non-rural practices.
It begins with a technologist completing an exam and sending it to TeleRad360 and is made immediately available in the cloud for review. The service is browser agnostic, so it’s a zero-footprint viewer. Relevant paperwork can be uploaded and messages can be sent to the reading radiologist. Radiologists can review the current previous images and dictate their findings using any of the 200 available templates. Reports can easily be accessed by logging into TeleRad360, and they can also be distributed to any electronic medical record.
Find out more about our teleradiology solution by contacting us today.
