AlleoHealth, (Hospice of Chattanooga) extols the benefits of online TeleHealth in the Covid era.

AlleoHealth, (Hospice of Chattanooga) extols the benefits of online TeleHealth in the Covid era.

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It's just as we all know our attentions and hyper focuse on all aspects of healthcare versus this coronavirus pen generally broke out back in march.

Join yourselves.

Doctor greg phelps and doctor phelps i with leo health system, which i the parent company of hospice of chattanooga.

First of all, doctor greg phelps good morning morning glad to be with you som of the technology we have seen medically speaking over the pas few years has just been really really impressive.

The topic were to talk about.

Mainly this morning was telehealth.

How using a phone or a computer can help you all aspects of your medical life.

But i never would've thought that this included palliative or end-of- life care.

Phyllis and will is you probably know, there were fairly stringent restrictions o telehealth on the federal government would only allow it for follow-up visits for extremely rural patients in vallejo and hospice of chattanooga covers 8000 square miles in three states so we do have some very rural patients, but on that was the only place telehealth could be used now down with coded crisis.

They suddenly opened the door way for us to be able to do telehealth with our patients.

Interestingl, the top administration allowed on telehealth with and didn't include hospice and palliative care.

In the initial on opening the doors we had to wait anothe week before that got clarified to do that but telehealth specifically requires that you have both audio and video through either a smart phone, computer or other device such as a tablet and so that way we can see the patient.

We can talk.

The patient and is not just physicians.

We can use our chaplains are social workers can can talk with the patients and actually be much more efficient because they don't have the miles in between to see the patients so it was exactly what telehealth include ... its telehealth.

It is best can include on instruments that can be linked to a computer to light an electronic stethoscope to listen to a patient on or an electronic otoscope to look in the patients.

Here's we are quite that far.

But we can fulfill the basic requirement which is to be able to see or hear the patient is this a lot of the older folks made the in need of relative care or hospice care may not be familiar with, or even have a smart phone like this.

What about them.

Are you able to talk with them just using a regular phone line we can.

There are different set of billing codes to do that on but yes the week.

They did give us permission to be able to talk t the phone for exactly the reasons you talked about being the elderly and the very people who are not tech savvy ... is this for financially efficient using telehealth ... it is on but i would say that nothing really substitutes with the ability to actually look se you touch the patient.

As you probably know the statistics sa that 70 percent of our communication is nonverbal on so were not doing it for financial reasons.

I promise yo were but it is a way for us to be able to continue to care for patients during this unprecedented emergency laws play in this great question.

The hippo was very stringent on tha was why you couldn't use a new or face time patients actually are.

We use a hipaa compliant, plat called since the armpit all the information goes through to keep it encrypt.

That said, the trumpet ministration is also loosened the hippo requirements on to as long as you tell the patient that this may not be a secure connection on you can.

You don't have to use that kind of computer intermediary, but we think it's much better to keep our patient privacy ... still have a minute or so left to the important take away message that our viewers need to leave this set ... alright i would say that the thing that they need to know most is as it is possible to ge here without having to leave th home.

It is possible to get care that can be done through a very smart phone, or even regular phone on the used and even initial visits we can do those now and this is been a revolution in how we can continue care.

The other complementary parties.

We can also do the prescribing of one part you have to do is hand the patient a prescription, particularly was a controlled substance.

Now we can do that over computers to himself brave new world.

I didn't think i was going to live long enough to se but is very exciting to be part of it is amazing what technology has allowed us to do the work that you and your team at hospice of chattanooga do day in and day out is beyond compare.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you will find out more information about how telehealth can help you get in touch with folks hospice of chattanooga.

They will be able to fill you with can check out their website.