The challenges of COVID caused every industry to pivot, introducing remote work and adjusting even basic operations. However, the medical sector faced unique challenges in making this shift, as treating patients, protecting health data, and performing lab-based research all present particular difficulties.
As the initial two weeks of shifting to remote work stretched into two years of a new reality, working in an office is no longer necessary. As a result, many medical IT departments expedited technological upgrades and began rolling out innovative new processes to allow employees to remain remote as the pandemic drags on.
New Opportunities for the Medical Industry to Go Remote
One of the pandemic’s surprises was how remote and hybrid working benefitted patients and cut overall costs. Some of the most instrumental remote work opportunities include telehealth appointments, home monitoring, and virtual scribes.
Telehealth
Past reluctance around telehealth appointments dissipated when the pandemic made them a necessity. Now, patients using telehealth appointments for follow-up visits, medication and disease management, or mental health issues often prefer telehealth visits.
Doctors, nurses, and support staff interested in remote work will find various opportunities. Telehealth appointments often mean short or nonexistent wait times, greater appointment flexibility (the ability to see a doctor from anywhere), and lower costs all around. The greater efficiency of telehealth appointments ensures that they’re not going anywhere.
Remote Patient Monitoring
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) emerged as a valuable way to supplement in-office visits before the pandemic. However, COVID revealed unexpected benefits and uses of utilizing tools that track information like oxygen saturation, blood pressure, glucose levels, and more.
As the data is collected, RPM programs can incorporate it into a patient’s existing health records, which remote healthcare workers monitor closely. In addition, as the RPM methodologies collect data while patients are in the comfort of their homes, readings tend to be more accurate and allow for more preventative care.
Virtual Scribes
Lowering exposure to contagious illnesses means that the fewer people on-site in healthcare facilities, the better. While many administrative roles proved conducive to remote work in the past, medical scribes rarely functioned remotely.
However, the shift to virtual scribes was almost seamless, with companies like Provider’s Choice Scribe Services ensuring HIPAA compliant facilities and rapid implementation. On-site medical workers, in particular, need to lessen the burden of administrative work to focus on the needs of their patients.
Remote Work Is Here to Stay
As the medical industry invests in the technology that makes remote work possible, health systems are cutting real estate costs and shifting to hotel-style cubicle spaces in smaller facilities. The forced migration to working from home for employees who aren’t required in-person dawned a realization that many employees never needed an office. As productivity remains high amongst remote workers, the demand to return to offices is dwindling. Flexible work locations benefit everyone, including patients, which means they will remain part of the “new normal.”
