In today’s day and age, technology is involved in everything. Right from the schooling and the employment sector to the farming and electronic sector, technology is a huge part. Well, healthcare isn’t behind on this, too. In fact, technology has proven to be a saviour in the healthcare and health insurance sectors.
In a country like India, where roads can’t take you to a patient or a doctor, technology can. This is a revolutionary change in the medical sector due to the access it offers to remote and rural areas.
With health insurance tax benefits and online facilities, telemedicine has become a huge trendsetter. Not only is virtual consultation and telemedicine improving healthcare accessibility, but it is also revolutionising the health insurance plans and the landscape.
In this blog, we will discuss how virtual consultations and telemedicine are game changers in the Indian health insurance industry.
Telemedicine in Health Insurance
With time, people have gotten accustomed to buying health insurance online and operating the online medical policy. This has repeatedly proven that online facilities save cost and time and make the procedure hassle-free.
The same goes for telemedicine in health insurance. The service that provides medical consultations and services to policyholders remotely is called virtual consultation. This service is provided using cell phone calls, video calls, or emails.
This is a beneficial service and strategy that will prove to be helpful to thousands of people who cannot commute or prefer to take consultations online.
Explaining the features in short
- Patients and professionals interact in real time through telecommunication technology. The entire process remains the same from here as it is in person. This helps the professionals to understand the symptoms, diagnose an illness, prescribe medicines, and monitor the conditions from home.
- Procedures like sending reports, images, and results to specialists are performed online. This saves the patient’s commute time and enables communication between the patient and the expert.
- In some cases, the post-surgery monitoring is done remotely. This monitoring is done with the help of wearable devices, tracking apps, and sensors. This data reaches healthcare providers from time to time.
- Telemedicine also extends the coverage of services to pharmacies, which enables patients to receive the best medications.
Benefits of online health consultation and telemedicine
When you buy a health insurance policy online, check if the company provides telemedicine because it offers you various benefits. Let us list a few advantages:
- Improved Accessibility
The biggest problem any developing country faces is access to better resources. The citizens from the lower class struggle to find good resources and consume them.
But with telemedicine, the industry is trying to bridge the gap between these medical services and their rightful consumers. The virtual consultation cuts down the commute and cost of transport if the travelling is long distance.
- Cost and Time-Saving
With virtual consultation, the patients can avoid expenses related to travel and waiting times. At the same time, healthcare providers can streamline their own operations while providing services.
Apart from this, the telemedicine facility removes the burden of physical infrastructure and staffing on a larger scale. Along with money, patients and professionals save much of their time in this process. This is because the entire procedure is online.
- Preventative Care
Telemedicine provides preventative care along with all the other services. This is an essential advantage because regular checkups and care are necessary today. The virtual services go beyond reactive services and provide preventative care that boosts healthcare awareness.
- Waiting period
With online services, consumers save a lot of time, and we have established that. But when it is a question of life and death, this time-saving property becomes a boon and saves a life. In an emergency, telemedicine reduces the waiting period and offers instant solutions, care, and prescriptions.
- Contactless Consultation
With contactless consultation, you prevent the risk of catching life-threatening diseases at the hospital. When one is ill and struggling with health, they are vulnerable to new infections.
In such a condition, it can be dangerous to visit a hospital, a place filled with infections. Virtual consultation provides contactless consultation that can avoid any contact whatsoever and keep you safe.
Conclusion
With virtual consultation, technology has once again proved its importance. When put to good use, it is a boon, and as members of the human race, we should all strive to do that.
The health insurance industry has integrated and used telemedicine in a way that is for sure going to benefit the policyholders with their health care. This integration of healthcare and medical insurance is no short of a revolution.
Telemedicine is precisely what the Indian healthcare industry needs, and it has also proven beneficial in the insurance industry. As consumers, you can use this to your own advantage and make the most out of both worlds by exhausting every possibility of using it for your benefit.
