How Healthcare Facilities Use Tech to Limit Covid Exposure
The pandemic has been a threat to every aspect of your daily life. However, the greatest problem with Covid-19 happens within the hospitals and medical clinics, where patients are treated beside someone who might possibly be infected. Protecting your staff from getting ill themselves is critical to keep your organization operating. Here are a few ways that healthcare facilities are using technology to limit Covid exposure.
Remote Billing
Websites and apps have been developed to reduce your staff from exposure to the virus by limiting the contact that they have with customers who might be sick. Your clients can submit their insurance cards or proof of income by uploading a photo of the documentation to the platform instead of physically handing it to a clerk to be scanned. The patient and their representatives can also pay an outstanding invoice on these sites as well. This is also very helpful to your organization if you choose to have your employees work from home. They can complete their tasks safely with little contact with those from outside their house, keeping them protected from Covid-19.
Visiting With Patients
It can be stressful for a patient and their families when they must recover alone due to visitor restrictions within the medical facility. You can aid in their healing by using tablets to facilitate conversations between the person in the hospital and their loved ones. This can boost their spirits and help them feel better. It also gives the relative a chance to ask the doctor or nurses any questions that they may have regarding the treatment that is being provided and what should be done when the individual is home.
Video Appointments With Patients
In the same way, physicians can assess a patient while they are at home by using video chat to talk to them. This limits the chances that the individual seeking help will be exposed to the virus by keeping them away from the medical facility where someone who might have Covid-19 will be. It also protects the doctor and his staff by reducing the face to face appointments that they have with their clients, one of which might be ill but asymptomatic. This type of technology gives the provider and the one seeking care a safe, stress-free opportunity to talk about what might be the problem while the customer remains in the comfort of their home.
Contact Tracing Software
One vital tool in the fight against Covid-19 has been contact tracing software. These programs allow agents to determine who an individual with the virus has been around. The health department then reaches out to these people and recommends that they isolate themselves from others for a specific amount of time. If the directions are followed, it contains the illness to that group and prevents it from spreading further. The technology can calculate where the patient has been then provide that data to those in the organization who need it. It also can report to the state and federal agencies who must have this information so they can adequately track the progression of the pandemic.
Online Medical Records
Having all of your medical information on an universal database accessible by the specialists that you work with allows them to treat you more thoroughly. It lets them exchange data on your care between themselves with little contact with each other. Physicians can collaborate, as well as research trials happening at the time or the best medication for your condition, on their own in the privacy of their office instead of having to be in an area where there are other professionals who are seeing their patients. Reducing the time these doctors spend in the same area will bring the infection rate in this industry down. Those who practice medicine are in a dangerous profession during the pandemic. The chances of being exposed to Covid-19 is very high. Technology can limit the contact that they have with patients and each other, bringing the rate of infection among them down.
