Telehealth Consultations

Telehealth consultations provide a way to diagnose, treat, and monitor patients in a less invasive and more cost-effective manner than the traditional on-site office visit.

Businesses want to keep employees healthy and safe, but despite their best efforts, workplace injuries can occur. Employees can get hurt on the job, resulting in missed work, decreased productivity and long and costly worker’s compensation claims. In addition to the initial medical evaluation for minor injuries, ongoing workplace injury treatment may be difficult to get to or cause workers to miss even more work.

However new trends in healthcare, such as telemedicine and telehealth, are changing the way employee injuries are diagnosed and treated. Telehealth is becoming widely accepted among employees.

Telemedicine can eliminate unnecessary and costly trips to hospital, cutting costs, improving employee satisfaction and worker productivity. 

What Is Telemedicine?

We’ve all heard of telecommuting and teleconferencing. Telemedicine uses these same principles of applying technology to advance real-time progress and bring together people or groups who are in different locations. In this case, it connects injured or ill employees and healthcare professionals or teams remotely for the purpose of diagnosis and treatment—whether in a hospital, clinic, at home or in the workplace.

Telemedicine is opening doors by providing greater access to physicians and medical services, which are sometimes not readily available within a certain demographic area.

Telemedicine offers advantages for patients and today’s technology ensures doctors can obtain the information they need quickly and efficiently. For injured employees, the use of telemedicine eliminates travel time and costs.  Telemedicine is also changing the way worker’s compensation claims are handled.

What are the benefits of Telehealth?

At HPOM we combine effective workplace injury management treatment with ongoing support as we understand the importance of clear communication after a workplace injury.

The benefits of telehealth include:

• Provide timely and accurate assessment
• Provide evidence-based treatment
• Assist in the coordination of care for the injured worker
• Ensure the worker understands their injury
• Assist the workplace to understand the worker's capacity to safely return to work.

Is Telemedicine Right for Your Business?

Ask yourself the following questions to evaluate whether or not telemedicine would be an appropriate option at your workplace.

• Are your employees’ injuries mostly from slight abrasions, contusions, and minor musculoskeletal work-related injuries?
• Is there a private room for Telemedicine consultations to take place in your workplace? Is your workplace open beyond regular hours and/or weekends?
• Is there stable internet connectivity in your workplace?
• Is your business in a rural area where some advanced or specialty health care options are inaccessible or inconvenient?
• Do you want to increase your employees’ productivity, improve their recovery time and save your business money?

If you answered yes to these questions, telemedicine may be the right option for your business.

Does Telehealth Save on Costs?

Telemedicine can offer significant savings on medical costs while providing immediate and early medical assistance to safely manage workplace injuries and illnesses. Telehealth solutions reduce claim costs, cut down wasted travel-time, and increase employee and business productivity throughout the injury and recovery process.

Telemedicine makes remote injury management easy when you are on-site, helping your company protect both the health of your employees and the profitability of your business.

Get in touch with us today to see if Telemedicine could be the solution to your rural and remote injury management.

What Is A Telehealth Appointment?

A Telehealth Appointment is the same as any regular clinical appointment. The only difference is that you will see and speak to your medical consultant via a video conference call. If you have ever used Skype or Zoom, then you’ll already be familiar with how Telehealth works.

Who Is A Telehealth Consultation For?

If you are unable to attend the clinic for your appointment you may be suitable for a Telehealth Appointment.

We highly recommend a Telehealth Appointment if:

• You are self-isolating or social-distancing
• You suffer from a physical disability/impairment that would make it difficult for you to attend
• You live in a rural and remote area

HPOM can also offer Telehealth Consultations for Workers Compensation and Covid-19.

WorkCover has extended the use of the COVID-19 telehealth and telephone items to all medical practitioners and/or patients who are unable to consult face to face during this pandemic to ensure continuity of patient care.