Telehealth can be seen as a ubiquitous topic in health care, but it may come by surprise to some that technology has been adopted rather slowly in the American healthcare system. The COVID pandemic has had a considerable influence on the increasing exploitation of communication technologies in the USA, but some challenges to telehealth adoption are still in place (Poppas et al., 2020).
One of the reasons for the low pace at which telehealth has been adopted is the need to allocate additional funds. Although technology is rather available and affordable (numerous devices can be purchased or rented at a low price), healthcare facilities need substantial resources to provide high-quality care. Moreover, hospitals need to integrate telehealth-related devices and systems into their existing information system, which is associated with additional investment. Devices need to be operational while employees need certain training. All these financial issues have become the burden that slowed down the process of telehealth adoption.
The existing requirements and standards imposed by federal and state authorities have been obstacles as well. Reimbursement peculiarities have made telehealth services less attractive to healthcare professionals (Huilgol et al., 2020). It is also necessary to add that a large population receiving healthcare services is the cohort of the elderly who are not active adopters of telehealth technologies.
Older patients still prefer face-to-face communication and receiving services in traditional forms. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, the COVID pandemic became a considerable impetus for telehealth adoption, and an increasing number of healthcare facilities are active users of this advancement. People in rural areas are most likely to benefit from telehealth, but the residents of populated urban areas are becoming more active users of telehealth as well. The development of new devices and applications, as well as the work on the alignment of different systems, contributes to the spread of telehealth.
References
Huilgol, Y. S., Miron-Shatz, T., Joshi, A. U., & Hollander, J. E. (2020). Hospital telehealth adoption increased in 2014 and 2015 and was influenced by population, hospital, and policy characteristics. Telemedicine and E-Health, 26(4), 455-461. Web.
Poppas, A., Rumsfeld, J. S., & Wessler, J. D. (2020). Telehealth is having a moment. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 75(23), 2989-2991. Web.