Read the full article at healthcareitnews.com.

"In this era of increasing pressures on health systems and providers, technology to help improve patient access and provider efficiency while maintaining quality of care is increasingly important, especially when considering the value equation of quality and cost. The adoption of telemedicine is one of those solutions. Patients are more used to doing “Zoom calls” and leveraging technology in their everyday lives. The findings specifically examine how telemedicine can help patients in a revision joint replacement situation: 100% of the revision hip replacement cases and 79.9% of revision knee replacement cases could be diagnosed and triaged/managed via telemedicine, explained Dr. Vigdorchik.

“It is my feeling that this method can be safe and effective at providing care in these difficult situations without compromising quality. An important next step would be to study the outcomes of these patients after their revision surgery,” said Dr. Vigdorchik. 

Read the full article at healio.com. 

Coyne said, “As we expedite the potentially wonderful tools of remote monitoring, telehealth and other digital solutions, we must not allow ourselves to be pulled toward the computer. We must use the computer to pull us back to each other.”

Read the full article at HealthcareITNews.com.

“So as you know, during the COVID pandemic, many if not all, primatologists were very limited in the number of in-person visits they could conduct. So, a large number of them were shifted to telehealth and a lot were done urgently,” noted Dr. Bridges. “And we were on the very steep part of the learning curve as to how best to do telehealth. So, there's a great need for ways to study the impact of telehealth on patient outcomes, how to optimize the way that telehealth works, how to better prepare the patients for a telehealth visit, to manage the problems that are technologies to assess joint swelling, and other manifestations of rheumatic disease,” he said.

Dr. Bridges continued, “Some of the things that we are interested in are leveraging telehealth to drive health equity and expand access to rheumatology care, particularly in underrepresented minorities and individuals that have trouble with access to care. Try to improve the uptake and satisfaction for both rheumatologist and rheumatology providers, as well as patients helping to drive policies that regulate telehealth to make sure that they are supportive of telehealth for the population that needs it. And we really want things that will drive improvements in patient outcomes, or at least inform how we can improve patient outcomes, using telehealth and tele-rheumatology.”

Dr. Bridges concluded. “I think telehealth is here to stay in rheumatology, again, for a certain set of patients. Those that live in very isolated areas that have significant transportation problems. Ideally, patients who are stable and need only a brief check-in with review of medications and ordering of labs throughout toxicity. So, I think that we will not see telehealth go away. If, you know, what we hope is that it will improve better and better care with improved patient outcomes, that it will continue to be reimbursed through insurance plans because it is going to be part of our armamentarium for the foreseeable future. So, I think we will see telehealth in rheumatology expand in certain areas, grow, and improve. And we'll always have the need to see our patients in person at certain times in their disease course. But I think that telehealth is really part of the long term vision of most rheumatologists who do outpatient, because we're mostly an outpatient specialty. I think telehealth and rheumatology is here to stay.”

Read the full article at Rheumatologynetwork.com.

“By the end of this week, we will have 200 physicians and surgeons providing care via telehealth. This live video option is offered to both existing and new patients,” said Justin Oppenheimer, chief strategy officer at HSS.

Read the full article at BeckersHospitalReview.com.