Roy Lehmann of Luling said one of his daughters hurt her back this spring and was not up for a long car ride. Now Olney is seeing telehealth startups emerging to help people manage chronic health conditions. With many clinics and offices closed to in-person visits, it was the only option for many. These first-timers were more than double the number of pre-pandemic telehealth users, Olney said. Telehealth has helped expand access to care across the state’s rural areas.īy May 2020, 4.5 million Texans had made their first telehealth visit, according to Mark Olney, a Dallas-based managing director at Accenture, a global professional services and consulting company. “People getting admitted to hospitals are sicker,” he said, and expensive emergency departments get overused. He has telehealth visits with children across Texas because of a shortage of pediatric GI specialists. When access to care declines, “people put off care and become very ill,” Barad said. Unfortunately, when a hospital goes, so do specialists and other health care providers. The primary reasons cited are cuts in Medicare and underpayments from Texas Medicaid. The state has 158 remaining rural hospitals, and over half of those - 82 - are at high risk of closing, according to a recent report from the federal Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Since 2010, 27 rural hospitals in 22 communities have shuttered, according to John Henderson, president and CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, known as TORCH. Texas has seen more hospital closures than any other state. A primary reason is a lack of rural hospitals. Rural residents have long grappled with shortages of medical providers and mental health professionals. Having the telemedicine option has been “very comforting” during the pandemic, she said, adding that she still hopes to meet in person with her cardiologist and her primary care physician in Brenham at least once a year. “My first visit was 8:15 in the morning, and I didn’t have to get up and drive to Bryan-College Station,” Schneider said of the initial phone session with her cardiologist. Schneider expects to continue virtual appointments for routine matters. Patients say they appreciate the simplicity, safety and convenience. Since 2020’s telehealth tsunami, use of the technology has ebbed, but no one expects it to recede to pre-COVID-19 levels. “The beauty and potential of telehealth is geography shouldn’t matter.” “Where you live, your ZIP code, is the biggest factor in your health care outcomes,” said Barad, who is based in Temple. Now, virtual visits are holding steady at about 11 percent of all outpatient encounters at Baylor Scott & White. The week of April 6, 2020, at the height of the response, telehealth had skyrocketed to 72 percent of visits. Before the pandemic, his system’s telehealth visits were about 1 percent of their total outpatient visits. The pediatric gastroenterologist is also medical director of virtual specialty care services for Baylor Scott & White Health. Now doctors and other providers could be paid for a variety of virtual appointments. She felt assured that she was healing well.Ĭall it telehealth, telemedicine or virtual care: The pandemic loosened restrictions around these visits, allowing audio-only calls, more kinds of health care professionals to engage in telehealth and more circumstances under which Medicare patients could take part, among other things. In less than 10 minutes, she answered his essential questions about her blood pressure - she was taking it at home and it was normal - and whether she still was experiencing heart palpitations - she wasn’t. In Schneider’s case, the virtual visit with her new Baylor Scott & White cardiologist in Bryan-College Station was by phone. Without leaving home, she joined millions of Texans who, for the first time, used a phone, tablet or computer to visit a health care provider. “I was scared to go outside,” said Schneider, who is retired. Schneider still needed follow up care, and COVID-19 posed a serious threat to her. Her new cardiologist was advising patients not to come into his office. But then the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, instead of fading, and that changed everything. To stay on top of her heart health, she connected with a cardiologist in Bryan- College Station, about an hour away, and saw him for the first time in April 2020. Later that month, she and her husband moved to a new home in Lincoln in Lee County. In December 2019, Clarice Schneider had a procedure for an irregular heartbeat in Houston, where she was living.
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