With growing concerns about a healthcare workforce shortage and rising costs, hospitals and health systems are exploring ways to provide services and keep expenses down.

“There is currently, and will remain until about the year 2030, a shortage of health care workers to meet the demand for care. This warrants a change in the delivery of health care and may indeed alter the way individuals and populations receive health care,” states an article in RT: For Decision-Makers in Respiratory Care.

One solution the article proposes? Telemedicine. Also known as telehealth, telecare and telemonitoring, it’s a way to use new and emerging technology to enhance health and health care.

Telemedicine encompasses videoconferencing, transmission of still images, e-health including patient portals, remote monitoring of vital signs, continuing medical education and nursing call centers. It is not a separate medical specialty. In terms of reimbursement fees, there is usually no distinction made between services provided on site and those provided through telemedicine and often no separate coding required for billing.

In the United States alone, 78% of health care costs stem from the treatment of chronic diseases. Chronic conditions create such a burden on health delivery systems that they have become a focal point for public health efforts and are one of public health’s highest priorities in reducing the overall financial burden of disease.

Telemedicine holds great potential in reaching out to those who are isolated by where they live or by how many others they live around. An individual who lives 300 miles away from the closest hospital has limited access to specialty services. People living in larger cities may be limited in their ability to seek specialty services due to an overwhelming demand in their area. Telemedicine can help provide services to each population with regards to both health care and communications.

For example, telemedicine may allow isolated, rural hospitals to gain access to other resources. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that rural hospitals have poorer outcomes, with patients having a 30 to 70 percent higher risk of dying from heart attack, congestive heart failure, or pneumonia. Telemedicine might offer greater access to specialists in a timely manner.

One argument against telemedicine initiatives is that the practice removes direct physician-patient care, but the article explains that “…telemedicine does not seek to remove the human element of care, but rather to be available more often than providers can afford in face of an ever-increasing demand for care. As an industry, health care and its providers need to embrace change that could ultimately improve patient access and patient security.”