Telemedicine enables local doctors to make virtual house calls
Chanel Rheubottom has been seeing her family doctor, Randi Braman, M.D., since she was 18. Whether she has needed medicine when she was feeling ill or anxious, minor surgery or pain management for a condition in her hand, or just her regular checkup, Rheubottom has always scheduled an appointment and drove down to Dr. Braman’s office at BW Primary Care in Eldersberg. For almost half of Rheubottom’s life, Dr. Braman has been a trusted confidant, a comforting voice, and a friendly face. She’s practically family.
But in the early spring of 2020, when the pandemic took hold of the entire country, everything suddenly changed. Hospitals and clinics everywhere were treating and testing patients for COVID-19. People avoided medical settings for fear of exposure and straining the precious supply of healthcare resources—even if they themselves had other symptoms, injuries, or ailments. Rheubottom’s situation was particularly touchy because she worked as a life enrichment assistant at an assisted living facility. If she went to the hospital, she’d have to get a rapid COVID-19 test before being allowed back. And if she tested positive, she’d miss days of work without pay in addition to the unpaid hours she would already have to take off to make an appointment.
So in March 2020, when the stresses of the pandemic and her job bearing down on her, Rheubottom was at an impasse. She needed her doctor to refill the prescription on her anxiety medication, but she couldn’t get to the hospital. That’s when Dr. Braman introduced Rheubottom to the idea of telehealth.
“Dr. Braman said we could just do it on my phone over Zoom,” says Rheubottom. “All I had to do was get one of my co-workers to cover for me, walk into the break room, and click the link on the text message the hospital had sent me. In five minutes, I was able to see the doctor, tell her how I was doing, and get the care and advice that I needed.”
Telehealth, or administering care via video conferencing when the patient and provider are not physically present with each other, is nothing new to Dr. Braman or her colleagues at LifeBridge Health. Years before the pandemic, LifeBridge Health had invested in the groundbreaking information technology and training to provide patients with the option of video visits to save time and resources on the more routine interactions, such as renewing prescriptions and basic follow-ups and check-ins. And physicians and nurses were conducting about 20,000 virtual visits a year.
Then came COVID-19. Almost overnight, people were unable, uneasy, or simply afraid to get to their doctors’ offices and hospitals. Without some way to report and get professional feedback on their ailments, symptoms, and injuries, many patients’ conditions would have certainly worsened, possibly beyond the point of treatment. Some of those conditions might have proven fatal.
Fortunately, LifeBridge Health already had the infrastructure in place to see and treat many of these patients from the comfort of their own homes, from their workplaces, or even from their cars. It was relatively simple to replicate and scale that model. LifeBridge Health quickly had more than 900 providers in their network up and running on telemedicine. Primary care physicians who were suddenly fielding 1,000 requests for virtual appointments per day didn’t miss a beat.
“We were fortunate because we were in a position where we were ahead of the curve on telemedicine, and we were able to scale quickly,” says Jonathan Thierman, MD, PhD, chief medical information officer for LifeBridge Health. “A couple of years ago, we were very proud of our 20,000 virtual visits a year. But during the year of COVID-19, we had more than 130,000 telemedicine visits.”
Even now that the pandemic is gradually subsiding, Dr. Thierman says that telemedicine has proven its worth and is here to stay.
“It’s all about access,” says Dr. Thierman. “Telemedicine provides greater access to healthcare for everyone from busy professionals, to stay at home caregivers, to patients in underserved communities who don’t have the transportation or the means to get to the doctor’s office. It’s also more convenient and respectful of the patient’s time—they don’t have to take half a day off work just to see the doctor. And it’s an advantage for the provider because they can see more people in a more efficient way. The more patients that are on your schedule, the more who are in your care.”
And while telemedicine is no substitute for some visits that require in-person physical examinations, tests, diagnostics, and, of course, procedures, Dr. Braman says that virtual sessions are more than sufficient for some appointments. Plus, by making it more convenient for the patient, it lessens the overall stress that might be worsening other physical and mental health conditions.
“There’s a lot you can pick up on when you can just see someone on the screen,” says Dr. Braman. “You can see signs of everything from sinus infections to congestive heart failure that let you know if you need to bring someone in for further, in-person examination. You can also detect stress and mood swings. For Rheubottom, it was a combination of not wanting to take off work and directly what was happening with the pandemic. She was just trying to manage the stresses of life. And for her, telemedicine was perfect.”
Rheubottom agrees with the doctor. Following her first virtual appointment, she saw Dr. Braman via telemedicine two more times, once for pain management with her hand and again to talk to the doctor when her grandmother died and her job wouldn’t let her use sick time without a doctor’s note. She conducted those appointments from the break room and the driver’s seat of her car parked in the lot in front of work. And she says those won’t be her last telehealth visits with her longtime physician.
“It saves so much time,” says Rheubottom. “I don’t have to take time off work. I can have my child with me and not have to drag them to the doctor’s office. Just five to 15 minutes on my phone was adequate for what I needed. I just think it’s the best thing they’ve ever come up with.”
To learn more about telemedicine at LifeBridge Health click here.