How state abortion bans complicate telehealth abortions : Shots

How state abortion bans complicate telehealth abortions : Shots

Allison Case is a family medicine physician who is licensed to practice in both Indiana and New Mexico. Via telehealth appointments, she’s used her dual license in the past to help some women who have driven from Texas to New Mexico, where abortion is legal, to get their prescription for abortion medication. Then came Indiana’s abortion ban.

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Allison Case, a family medicine physician, spends much of her time working in a hospital where she delivers babies and provides reproductive health care services, including abortions.

Case lives and works in Indiana, where a ban on most abortions took effect for a week in late September until a judge temporarily halted the ban. The state has since appealed the judge’s order and asked the Indiana’s high court to take up the case. Meanwhile, Case is also licensed to practice in New Mexico, a state where abortion remains legal.

Before Indiana’s abortion ban took effect, Case would use her days off to provide reproductive health services, including abortion care, via telemedicine through a clinic that serves patients in New Mexico. Many of them travel from neighboring Texas, where abortion is banned.

Some travel solo, she says, and others have their children with them.

“Some people are [staying in] hotels, others might have family or friends they can stay with, some are just sleeping in their cars,” Case says. “It’s really awful.”

During a telemedicine appointment, doctors, nurses or other qualified health professionals review the medical history of the patient and ensure eligibility for a medication abortion. They give the patient information about how the two pills work, how to take them, what to look out for as the body expels the pregnancy, and when to seek medical attention in the rare instance of complications. The medications are then mailed to the patient, who must provide a mailing address in a state where abortion is legal.

In the U.S., more than a dozen states severely restrict access to abortion, and almost as many have such laws in the works. Across the country, since Roe v. Wade was overturned, clinics that do provide abortions have seen an increase in demand. Many clinics rely on help from physicians out of state, like Case, who are able to alleviate some of the pressure and keep wait times down by providing services via telemedicine.

But as more states move to restrict abortion, these providers are finding themselves navigating an increasingly complicated legal landscape.

Is abortion by telemedicine legal? Experts differ

Medication abortions work for most people who are under 11 weeks pregnant, and research suggests medication abortion via telemedicine is safe and effective. Yet many states have enacted legislation to ban or limit access to telehealth abortions.

But it’s not always clear what that means for doctors like Case who are physically located in a state with abortion restrictions but have a license that enables them to provide care via telehealth

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Cal Poly Humboldt Expands Wellness Treatment with New Telehealth Services

Cal Poly Humboldt Expands Wellness Treatment with New Telehealth Services

Telehealth has confirmed to be an important device for assisting college students stay linked with health care suppliers all through the pandemic. To continue on supporting the wellbeing and wellbeing of pupils, Cal Poly Humboldt has extra a supplemental telehealth services referred to as TimelyCare.

Cal Poly Humboldt Expands Wellness Treatment with New Telehealth Services
Student Health and fitness & Wellbeing Companies
Starting Monday, March 7, pupils can use TimelyCare, produced by TimelyMD, to locate certified health care and psychological wellbeing vendors outside common company hrs (evenings, weekends, holiday seasons, and in the course of winter season, spring, slide, and summertime breaks).

TimelyMD created its proprietary engineering to offer learners a 24/7 extension of Cal Poly Humboldt’s health and counseling heart resources and is element of the University’s ongoing efforts to prioritize the wellbeing and wellbeing of the campus community.

TimelyCare is a person of a number of assets provided by Cal Poly Humboldt’s University student Well being & Wellbeing Services (SHWS ). SHWS will stay the main health care touchpoint for pupils and will coordinate treatment and make referrals to TimelyCare as suitable. At the very same time, the addition of TimelyCare signifies Humboldt pupils have access to on-desire after-several hours treatment in all 50 states, a services that is in particular beneficial for these who are living in distant parts with restricted healthcare options, suggests Dr. Jennifer Sanford, Interim Govt Director of SHWS.

“Now extra than at any time we want to address gaps in health and fitness coverage for our college student community. Our partnership with TimelyCare will provide a important expansion of solutions when SHWS is not available to them,” suggests Sanford. “I am actually psyched about being ready to offer our college students comprehensive assistance, in addition to diversifying our network of obtainable clinicians via this partnership.”

Making use of the TimelyCare application from a cell phone or desktop, pupils can select digital treatment possibilities from certified medical professionals and counselors with numerous backgrounds in all 50 states at no value. Company profiles and information of their specialties are accessible as nicely. Pupils can choose a specific service provider or the first available appointment. Providers include things like:

• Healthcare treatment (on-demand from customers and appointment-dependent)
• Psychological wellbeing counseling (on-desire and appointment-dependent)
• Psychiatric assist (upon interior referral)
• Health and fitness coaching

Mental wellness continues to be the best worry of higher education and college presidents. A current survey found the vast majority of school college students sense even extra stress and stress than they did a yr in the past thanks to the disruptive effect of COVID-19. The University’s TimelyCare software is supported by federal crisis COVID relief funds that had been allocated to Cal Poly Humboldt.

“College students mentioned the quantity a person thing their campuses can do to assist them suitable now is give extra digital products and services concentrated on their wellbeing and nicely-being, these as telehealth and teletherapy,” suggests Luke Hejl, TimelyMD CEO and co-founder. “Through TimelyCare, we are happy to

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8 benefits of Telehealth | Healthcare IT News

8 benefits of Telehealth | Healthcare IT News

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an eye-opener for what really matters in both personal and professional life. Healthcare providers are especially faced with new challenges: balancing best-practice patient care, reworking guidelines to protect and support their personnel, and much more. These challenges gave telehealth the chance to grab the spotlight.

The benefits of telehealth are striking, offering hospitals the chance to brand themselves as innovative and using cutting-edge technologically. And while the pandemic has pushed telehealth forward, its ability to provide a high level of medical care in numerous situations will make telehealth a permanent fixture in healthcare. Continuous improvements in technology and further simplifications of tedious processes support this evolution.1,2,3
 

Here, we summarize 8 reasons why you should consider telehealth to be part of the holistic health practice of your hospital.

  1. Expand Your Patient Base

A frustrating element of in-person care has always been late or no-show patients. It results in time lost for the Health Care Practitioner (HCP) as well as the lost opportunity to reach out to a new patient. Now, imagine HCP’s days full of virtual medical visits. There is a reduction of no-shows and increased treatment persistence4, mainly because of treatment success. In a survey based in the US, patients that experienced telehealth visits highly rated this type of healthcare (recommendations: > 80%)5,6, stating it was beneficial for their mental health as well.7

Additionally, HCPs’ patient base can be dramatically expanded since telehealth provides easy access and scheduling. In a cross-sectional survey, 52.5% of clinicians were convinced that virtual visits allow for higher efficiency, while quality was equal to that of in-person visits.5

For healthcare providers, the promotion of telehealth solutions can lead to increased patient numbers. Via telehealth opportunities, you easily enlarge the catchment area of your hospital. This is of particular interest in the countries, where most of the overall population lives in rural areas.6,8,9

  1. Increased Patient Flexibility

When scheduling a doctor’s appointment, patients must consider a variety of personal barriers, such as: travel time, time off work, childcare, and more. Telehealth visits dramatically reduce these accompanying problems, leading to stress reduction and increased flexibility – even in emergency situations. In fact, this kind of convenience was highly appreciated and preferred by established patients as shown by Donelan et al.5

In a survey among telehealth patients in the UK conducted by Dhahri et al., family closeness was one of the most appreciated advantages of telehealth.10 This may be due to elderly patients or children having support from their adult family members during virtual visits. In a cross-sectional telehealth narrative analysis conducted by Kruse et al., preferred modality and improved self-management were among the most frequent factors mentioned by patients.11

Based on this, in addition to medical advantages, patients benefit as well from reduced transportation and waiting times. Collectively, on-demand virtual visits can help your patients to balance work, life, and healthcare.

  1. Increase Collaboration Opportunities between Medical Disciplines

A full-service hospital combines

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Telehealth visits by cell phone may well quickly close except legislators act : Shots

Telehealth visits by cell phone may well quickly close except legislators act : Shots

Group clinics say the easing of limitations on telehealth through the pandemic has produced it probable for health and fitness employees to hook up with tricky-to-access individuals through a phone simply call — folks who are very poor, elderly or stay in distant areas, and you should not have entry to a pc or cellphone with online video functionality.

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Community clinics say the easing of constraints on telehealth for the duration of the pandemic has designed it attainable for health and fitness personnel to link with really hard-to-access sufferers via a cellular phone phone — individuals who are weak, elderly or stay in remote parts, and don’t have accessibility to a pc or cellphone with video clip capacity.

Silke Enkelmann/EyeEm/Getty Photos

Caswell County, where William Crumpton works, operates together the northern edge of North Carolina and is a rural landscape of largely former tobacco farms and the occasional rapid-food stuff restaurant.

“There are vast locations where cellphone indicators are just nonexistent,” Crumpton claims. “Issues like satellite radio are even a challenge.”

Crumpton, who grew up in this area, is CEO of Compassion Wellness, a federally funded community overall health centre. The county has no hospital or crisis area. And for substantially of the pandemic, about 50 % of the center’s individuals could only be attained the old fashioned way: a fundamental voice connect with on a cellular phone landline.

“We have persons who live in residences that would not be in a position to make a cellphone connect with if they required to,” he claims. “Significant-velocity net is not available to them in addition, the only link that they had to the exterior earth in some scenarios is a rotary dial mobile phone.”

So when state and federal governments quickly eased privacy and security limitations on telehealth early in the pandemic, a lot of patients across the nation ended up able to get identified and addressed by health professionals above telephones that will not have video clip or digital camera functions. That, in flip, built it doable for wellbeing treatment employees to link with challenging-to-achieve individuals — individuals who are bad, elderly or dwell in remote areas.

But now, the procedures that temporarily eased licensing and reimbursement constraints in strategies that expanded the use of this form of telehealth assistance are rapidly shifting.

There are about 1,000 proposals pending prior to condition and federal legislatures that address extending or expanding telehealth further than the pandemic’s community wellness unexpected emergency. To date, about half of all U.S. states have passed measures keeping audio-only telehealth in place. In the remaining states, absent legislation, aged limitations governing telehealth have kicked back again in or will some will sunset when the federal public well being emergency ends someday immediately after the end of the calendar year, even though others have set their very own timelines.

In the meantime, insurance policy coverage procedures are also in flux. Medicare, for instance, says it will protect

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