Telecare is a way of providing healthcare services or education through remote technologies. The use of mobile apps, remote patient monitoring, and video conferencing are examples of eHealth technologies that can be used to improve healthcare outcomes (George, 2020). This letter will be a proposal to lobby for $2 million to implement telehealth services in the referral hospital by providing a personal story, demonstrating how eHealth would have saved the situation and telemedicine benefits the wider society.
Peter, a 24-year-old boy, complained about sudden numbness and severe headaches for two weeks. One of the rainy afternoons, he collapsed in the kitchen. His mother tried to wake him up, and when she noticed that he was not breathing, she called 911. Due to the rainy weather and the distance between her home and the health center, Peter was taken to a local healthcare facility near his home. Unable to treat him, they sent Peter to the referral hospital hundreds of miles away. Peter was brought to the health center eleven hours later, unconscious and unable to talk, several tests were done on Peter, and he was found to have had an ischemic stroke. He was given the IV recombinant tissue plasminogen activator, which helped him recover, but his brain cells had already been damaged. Peter was admitted to the hospice for six months and later passed away, leaving the family with a high hospital bill and no positive outcome for their lovely son.
A stroke is a disease that blocks the oxygen supply to the brain. The disease affects more than 795,000 people in the US every year, and it is a recurrent disease whereby one in every people who have a Cerebrovascular accident has had a previous Ischemic Stroke (George, 2020). However, a Cerebrovascular accident can be successfully treated if the patient is given a thrombolytic within the first four hours to break the blood clots. However, the longer the patient stays without medical care, the more likely they will not fully recover and increase the patient’s chances of being disabled (George, 2020). Every minute of untreated stroke, over two million brain cells die. This shows that treating the condition within the shortest time possible is important to achieve better health outcomes. Other diseases which require quick treatment include dengue hemorrhagic fever, pneumonia plaque, and meningitis.
One of the best methods to avoid the deaths of such patients is through telehealth. Telehealth helps to provide timely care to patients in need of quick medical attention. For instance, if there were telehealth services in the local hospital, Peter could have been given a thrombolytic before being transferred to the referral hospital, which could have helped save his brain cells. Telehealth services will relieve the strain on the referral hospital, allowing it to offer quality services to other patients. Telehealth ensures that healthcare services can reach rural areas by overcoming distance and bad weather barriers (George, 2020). Finally, telehealth services are cost-effective because when a person is treated on time, it avoids extended bedtime and other unnecessary expenses due to increased stay in the hospital. Therefore, I request you to provide this referral hospital with $2 million to help implement telehealth services. This service will be beneficial to the hospital and community and reduce government expenditure on striving to provide healthcare services. Additionally, it will ensure that everyone, even those in rural areas of the country, can have access to quality, timely and cost-effective services.
Reference
George, M. G. (2020). Risk Factors for Ischemic Stroke in Younger Adults.Stroke, 51(3), 729–735.