Telemedicine is offering patients a way to access healthcare remotely and has become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic when social distancing is encouraged. Washington County Hospital and Clinics has been working to put telehealth into their services since last fall and has recently been using it more frequently.

Dr. Ryan Flannery shares these appointments provide patients a way to see their doctors over a video conference at a set time without having to leave home. He says the telehealth appointments also helps reduce the use of personal protective equipment at medical facilities while allowing providers a way to view the symptoms of patients, “We’re using it pretty extensively to help us further triage patients that sound like over the phone, they may have an infectious issue like COVID-19. And if we can further evaluate the patient separate from just talking to them on the telephone, but we can evaluate them in real time where we see how they’re breathing, we see how they look, we see how they interact, we can do some limited physical exam on the telemedicine visit, it gives us a much better way to say a certain patient maybe looks sicker and they maybe need to get some more medical attention somewhere else. Or maybe they look healthy enough, but they may have symptoms of COVID-19 and allows us to make that better judgement call. And it saves then those patients leaving the safe confines of their home and decreasing their rate of potentially going out to a clinic or a hospital setting and potentially spreading this illness they may have to somebody else. And then rightfully so, if you don’t have patients then coming out for clinic visits, then providers are still needing to use personal protective equipment, but if the volumes of those visits go down you can actually use the protective equipment more judiciously, and continue to spread out the use of that to make it last longer.”

Flannery adds that telemedicine visits are secured in their system as part of the patient’s medical record. WCHC has taken additional steps to help patients presenting certain symptoms with the implementation of a respiratory triage clinic on the east side of the hospital campus.

He adds that traditional in-person appointments are still being scheduled and are available to patients, especially situations where lab testing or imaging needs to occur. To set up an appointment for telehealth or in person, call WCHC.