Why Healthcare Professionals are using Telemedicine?
As a consequence of Covid-19, healthcare became the fastest-growing sector in the US, with a pronounced growth in primary care. Telemedicine reemerges as the preferred way to engage patients and Healthcare Professionals in a real time, two-way communication.
According to MedcityNews, clinics and hospitals had to “pivot to digital solutions to ensure continuity of care for their patients.” For example, in the case of the Miami-based Cano Health, prior to the pandemic, only about 1% of patient visits were conducted virtually. “By early April 2020, north of 90% of patient encounters were conducted via telemedicine”, said Dr. Marlow Hernandez, co-founder and CEO of Cano Health.
Telemedicine solves a major issue for healthcare amidst the pandemic: primary care patients need more attention but, at the same time, by commuting to a hospital or clinic they put themselves at risk of contracting the virus. To address this, medical institutions started conducting drive-by visits, where patients accessed medical center parking lots, and medical assistants brought iPads to their cars, so patients could connect with their clinicians virtually.
Home Healthcare delivers attention to remote patients, allowing them to get the medical care they need at home, and avoid risking public contact with dangerous infections.
Hospitals and Health Centers must deliver the best patient experience, which requires the safest and more comfortable place possible, whether that’s online, in-person, over the phone or video. New contexts create new needs, and demand new solutions and approaches.
With every daily task becoming “remote”, people expect easy access to shop, work and care from wherever they are. Hospitals and health centers had no option but to base their attention delivery on patient demand.
Healthcare delivered anywhere is the goal for every hospital and health center. However, if the only option is a video call, people who lack access to Wi-Fi see their coverage limited. In other cases, limitations arise when patients don’t speak English as their first language. According to the statistics of Datausa.io, the most common foreign languages spoken in Pittsburgh are Spanish (28,740 speakers), Chinese (Incl. Mandarin, Cantonese) (16,615 speakers), and Italian (7,706 speakers). This is why medical translation services are becoming a key differential in the healthcare industry, especially for institutions who provide care to foreign language speakers.
Medical translation services also assist in translating medical records, patient’s consent forms, etc. Research labs can also benefit from language translation services to expand their reach to clinical trials and research in foreign languages. Quality, in life sciences and healthcare, extends all the way to the accuracy and timeliness of translation. A medical prescription incorrectly translated causes all sorts of inconveniences from delays to rework, and could even escalate to costing a life.
Hospitals and healthcare institutions are transitioning into a new kind of relationship with their patients, which requires them to incorporate technology, multicultural attention and remote assistance into their definition of health services.
As redesigning their internal structures means high costs and a considerable amount of time, the fastest way to adapt to this new environment might be with external providers for technology development and multilingual interpretation and translation.
Choosing these providers can prove tricky, though. Critical institutions like hospitals need experienced providers who can easily integrate with technology or, better yet, who already have tech-driven services available. Criteria for selection should focus on high-quality services and excellent customer attention, in addition to having a wide variety of language pairs.
Furthermore, it is important to work with a provider that offers translators from all over the world, that can ensure quality translations carried out by native speakers. There are some interesting challenges ahead for healthcare, as well as a lot of opportunity. For those institutions that recognize the value of external help, tackling those challenges will be a much lighter task. We at LST are here to help.
Authors:
Hugo Rizzi
CEO at Language Solutions Team
Laura Aguirre
Marketing Manager at Language Solutions Team
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