Future
E-visits (remote use of medical services) may soon become one of the most commonly used options of patient portals. The most likely demographic for uptake of e-visits are patients who live in remote rural areas, far from clinical services. An Internet session would be much cheaper and more convenient than traveling a long distance, especially for simple questions or minor medical complaints.
Providing a route that does not require in-person patient visits to a clinic may potentially benefit both patients and providers. Many organizations find that overall utilization drops when e-visits are implemented, in some places by as much as 25%. This makes e-visits a very interesting proposition for insurance companies, although few actually re-imburse for them currently. E-visits, with the proper functionality, also allow the patient to update their allergies, vital signs, and history information.
Providing e-visits allows the standard healthcare organization to offer a product that can compete on price with the retail clinics that are popping up in strip malls and Wal-mart.
Read more about this topic: Patient Portal
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
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—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)