Overcoming Barriers to Emergency Care During a Telehealth Appointment

The following is a guest article by Alexander Chiu, MD at Telemedicine911. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a quick pivot to telehealth, where patients in any location can connect with a provider from any location. The rapid adoption of telehealth and virtual provider brought light to the following question – What happens during a telehealth visit if the provider recognizes that the patient needs urgent help due to an emergent situation?  Telling a patient to “hang up and call 911” or “hang up and go to the ER” is like telling a person who just walked into the provider’s office to leave and go somewhere else to get help. Nearly 600,000 calls are made to 911 each day in the U.S. It’s interesting to note that the 911 system is not a national system. There are nearly 6,000 individual PSAPs (public safety answering points) and 3,000 county 911 centers that manage the calls. These PSAPs and county call centers aren’t connected, meaning they can’t handle calls for other 911 districts. If a call comes into their call center requesting help for someone outside that PSAP or county, the system isn’t able to seamlessly transfer the caller to the appropriate PSAP or county 911 center. We’ve known this has been an issue for years but the 911 infrastructure, which was developed more than 40 years ago, is an antiquated, disjointed system with many limitations. One of the most prevalent now is the system’s inability to locate an individual unless the person is calli...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring 911 Dispatch Air®GeoLocate Alexander Chiu Emergency Medical Services EMS PSAP Public Safety Answering P Source Type: blogs