Overwhelmed in the Emergency Department
All hospitals are trying to do more with less as Emergency Departments take over the functions of primary care. Patients will come in with both serious and trivial illnesses and the fast triage and treatment expected can’t be put on an overburdened system. With the requirement to treat everyone and the decrease in primary care or family doctors it’s often found to be the only way to see a medical professional when ill. Waiting rooms can be hour long ordeals, and finding space in the hospital can take even longer as patients wait for test results or information from specialists. Sometimes even seeing an emergency room doctor can be a multi-day affair. Technology has stepped in, but it hasn’t stepped up.
Telemedicine first came into the mainstream during the pandemic, but the practice of doctors in a hospital consulting an outside specialist isn’t new. From the days of pagers and payphones to today’s two-way video calls, consulting additional assistance beyond Emergency Department providers has always been best practice. Many patients will assume that a hospital has every specialist available when they go in with a crisis but have found that they’re often met with a medical staff that’s overwhelmed. This is where specialists step into the process.
The Doctor Can’t See You Right Now
One of the most common uses for home health visits via telemedicine is therapy or psychiatry, as these often don’t require any physical examination. Once in a hospital this changes as medical providers are required to ensure the safety of patients with mental health issues. An increase in reported mental health issues has occurred as society has encouraged self-reporting, but this comes at an unfortunate time of a provider shortage. Psychiatry is the specialty with the highest average age, and the availability of training new psychiatrists hasn’t increased. Psychiatric nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants have been thrust into new roles, but often this doesn’t function in an emergency system.
The result of this has been a situation where a patient may need to see a psychiatrist, but there’s no one that can see them. Hospitals are then put into a bind over whether to keep patients in the hospital, using up scarce resources, or releasing them with only a short term treatment plan and a recommendation to see a psychiatrist, despite knowing the availability of these can be low, with the few available psychiatrists to see new patients, and even fewer taking insurance.
A Video Call for Your Health
Hospital telepsychiatry is the practice of using telemedicine to provide psychiatric consultations. These are often done as a combination of meetings between a telepsychiatrist and a patient over two-way video conferencing over a tablet or a similar device as well as a follow up consultation with the medical staff in the hospital. One company with 17 years of experience and specialization in this 24-hour care is FasPsych, an Arizona-based medical staffing company operating in all 50 states.
The new technology often results in direct consultation with patients by a specialist doctor while they are in the hospital. They will see initial staff in person, but once they go beyond the basics of stabilization they find that the emergency department might not be able to handle their needs. What once would have been a situation where they were sent home and told to schedule an appointment has now become a seamless experience, where outcomes of care are equivalent to in-person visits.
Telemedicine – the Future of Hospital Care
Telemedicine is stepping in, stepping up, and moving forward to advance medical care. On demand telepsychiatry is just one area where the use of technology to reach specialists is being adopted in hospitals, and fields like radiology have long used this technology. The difference is psychiatry moves beyond a doctor-to-doctor consultation and directly to a doctor to patient care model. Many companies are entering the field or expanding, with FasPsych leading the way in telepsychiatry.
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