Telemedicine – the marriage of medicine and modern telecommunications technology – is taking the world by storm. More and more people are availing of this new and groundbreaking form of medical treatment. There are lots of great advantages to choosing telemedicine over traditional medicine. One of the biggest advantages is the huge amount of time a person can save by using telemedicine.
Telemedicine tends to be far more time-efficient than any other type of medical treatment. It can save people hours, and often literally days, worth of time! Here are six reasons telemedicine is such a huge timesaver.
Telemedicine Gives Patients a Vast Amount of Choice, Right at Their Fingertips
Telemedicine allows people to save a huge amount of time by searching for the most appropriate medical services for them from the comfort of their own home, via the internet. In the past, finding the right doctor to treat your particular medical condition was often akin to a very time-consuming search for a needle in a haystack, but today telemedicine allows medical professionals to operate in a digital space that is extremely easily and quickly accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection. It now takes less time than ever before to find the right doctor for your specific needs using telemedicine.
Telemedicine Cuts Down the Need to Travel One of the most time-consuming aspects of traditional medical treatment was the travel involved. Even for a minor medical condition traveling to the local doctor’s surgery can be quite a time-consuming undertaking. For patients who need to see a specialist often a long trip to another city, state, or even country is required. Telemedicine has made it possible to have a consultation with a medical professional anywhere in the world remotely without having to leave your home. This means that long and time-consuming journeys are now far less necessary than in the past, and this is a huge timesaver.
No more getting stuck in traffic on the way to the doctor’s surgery!
Telemedicine Does Away With the Need to Queue in a Doctor’s Waiting Room
A huge time-sink in traditional medicine was the obligatory wait in the doctor’s waiting room. Queues can be painfully long in doctors’ surgeries, especially during busy seasons such as winter, when colds and flus are most common. Queuing in a doctor’s waiting room is most people’s idea of “dead time” – it’s difficult to be productive as you sit there marinating in other people’s germs (no matter how riveting the selection of out-of-date magazines happens to be!). Telemedicine has improved this situation in two major ways. Firstly, it has made it much less necessary to visit a doctor’s surgery for many people, much of the time. People with minor illnesses and ailments can have their needs met using a telemedicine consultation, so they save all the time they otherwise would have wasted queuing. Secondly, since many people are getting to stay away from the surgery altogether, for people who do need to attend in-person, the queues now tend to be much smaller.
Telemedicine Facilitates Instantaneous Transmission Of Medical Information
In the past, time would be wasted while results of tests would be mailed around in hard copy form. Thankfully, those days are now gone. Telemedicine has made it possible to send advanced test results from doctor to doctor, from hospital to hospital, and from both doctor and hospital to patient. This high-fidelity, instantaneous transmission of medical information has resulted in huge time savings for patients and medical professionals alike.
Technology goes a long way in helping to reduce time spent transmitting medical data.
Telemedicine Allows Patients to Choose the Most Efficient Medical Professionals
Telemedicine opens up a vast market of choice for patients and consumers of medical and surgical services. Not all medical professionals are created equal, and therefore some operate at a higher level of efficiency than others. Telemedicine allows patients to save a lot of precious time by choosing to consult with the most competent, skilled, and time-efficient medical professionals in the world. This results in huge time savings for patients.
Telemedicine Reduces Emergency Room Waiting Times
Everybody has a story about somebody they know attending an emergency room and having to wait some hilariously huge amount of time to receive some relatively minor treatment. Many of these tales are probably exaggerated for comic effect, yet there is no doubt that ER waiting times over the past few decades have often tended to be quite long in many parts of the country. But telemedicine has come to the rescue in this area, too! ER waiting times are decreasing as more and more people are able to stay away from ERs because they are getting their ailments sorted out via telemedicine. This means that queues in ERs are shorter, waiting times are subsequently decreasing… and precious time is being saved!