Will the pandemic relent forever and disappear, or will it?
As evidence mounted that the COVID-19 pandemic was subsiding in parts of the United States and around the world, massive changes in the way numerous services had been provided at the peak of the pandemic were envisioned by many. This was welcome news for the world including those in the medical ecosystem.
The hope was often that any reprieve from the COVID-19 pandemic’s grip would be sustained and widespread. Was this often a false hope? Perhaps. There were several stalled starts to full and complete societal re-opening, with expected return to pre-pandemic life as usual. Over the course of two years, there have been several false dawns with the allure of return of global health security, freedom from the grip of indoor restrictions and from confinement to predominantly online activities in many sectors of life, including healthcare.
Welcome or goodbye to supercharged telemedicine…
Undoubtedly, acceleration of telemedicine adoption was one byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether positive or otherwise in its overall global impact, time will tell. As normalcy is envisaged and continually hoped for, a frequently asked question is the fate of telemedicine as a way of medical care. Yes, some patients yearn to see their provider in person. Yet, others dread the days of old, when visiting doctors’ offices constituted a best avoided inconvenience.
The one thing universally agreed upon is that individual healthcare as a basic tenet of public health, which has since been further thrust into the limelight by the COVID pandemic, cannot be placed on hold forever. Importantly, individual and population health are, and will forever remain intertwined. Tools such as telemedicine, a core component of virtual care, hold the key to alleviating the eternal burden of global healthcare needs. Telemedicine has clearly demonstrated its utility in addressing our ever burgeoning healthcare needs, both on an individual and global scale.
What does the future hold for healthcare delivery to patients and for providers?
Brick and mortar medical care services have been ageless. Is the model alone sustainable in the long run? Huge limitations became very apparent as the world was inundated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While virtual medical care may have its perceived and inherent limitations such as the absence of the touchy-feely patient-provider interaction, it is widely agreed that it serves extremely valuable clinical purposes especially with the advent of technology that continues to morph the world into populations without borders. The innumerable positive qualities of virtual medical care outweigh any qualitative cons that are
occasionally described regarding telemedicine.
For a lot of patients, the vagaries of transportation to a provider, time loss from a job often due to a need to commute a fair distance to the doctors’ office, frequently pose a challenge. With these factors, coupled with prolonged wait times in a medical facility’s brick and mortar waiting rooms, nothing could be better than the advent and widespread adoption of telemedicine and its numerous accompanying advantages. In the case of sleep medicine, the need to physically pick up and return sleep test kits in person is an additional burden, the need for which has been obviated by services provided in tandem with a virtual visit to the sleep medicine provider. Of the many advantages that have been quantitatively demonstrated, convenience of care, widespread reach, on-demand access, ease of use, lower cost of service and shorter turnaround times are among the long list of benefits of virtual sleep medicine.
Here to stay, here for good!
Change can be formidable, yet change is often inevitable and it frequently serves good purposes. The acute pivot to widespread telemedicine implementation brought about by the sudden onset of a gripping and restricting global event may have seemed a lot to handle for the healthcare world. In many ways, this was a very much needed boost to a flailing physically restrictive service model that was overdue for change. To stay, is a boon to potential and active patients; telemedicine is a blessing in a myriad of ways. Virtual sleep medicine brings good tidings for sufferers of sleep-disordered breathing! A positive transformational change in the way patients with sleep disorders are cared for can only be a good thing. Care delivery ought to be readily accessible, affordable, widely acceptable and easy to use. Virtual care for sleep medicine checks the boxes.
In all, Sleep medicine represents one of the few medical specialties that lend themselves most fittingly, to non-touch medical care service. The much valued direct, face to face interactions required for optimal patient care are easy to accomplish via a virtual model with simple and dedicated platforms as are now available to patients with sleep issues such as the highly prevalent sleep disorder of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, afflicting 9 to 22% of the adult US population.
Dr. Akinnusi offers sleep care through Ognomy, a dedicated, vertically integrated virtual sleep medicine suite where providers are leaders at the forefront of sleep telemedicine care. The comfort and convenience of our patients is always our goal. We are here to stay for our patients and to help overcome troubled sleep.
With or without a pandemic, we offer timeless Sleep medicine.