Monday, January 31, 2011

Can Telemedicine Enhance Medicare Supplement Insurance Care?

Posted by: Colorado medicare supplement insurance


Telemedicine isn't for the space station, but it is intended to reach into communities exactly where there's less access to specialists, like in rural locations. Imagine becoming able to speak to your physician "face-to-face" without having to go to her office. That signifies no a lot more hassles of getting wheelchairs in the van, or attempting to find streets that have been cleared of snow in the winter to preserve your doctor's appointment. If you're in a modest town, it can also mean you won't have to journey across the state to see the closest specialist.

What does telemedicine give you if you're eligible for Medicare? The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has already proposed new policies to increase the use of telemedicine. Seniors and those with disabilities are amongst those most likely to benefit from the growing use of technology-delivered medicine.

Mobility usually becomes a lot more challenging as we age, but with video conferencing, you can nonetheless "see" and speak with your doctor devoid of risking a fall although traveling to a doctor's appointment. Even in rural regions with little access to specialists, Medicare and

Medicare Supplement plans can offer you you a lot more healthcare alternatives.

Medicare Supplement Insurance Plans Can Improve Access To Healthcare
You may possibly have heard that our aging population is expected to place a better demand on the current healthcare system. With telemedicine, even towns that have trouble attracting specialists will be able to connect you with specialists in urban settings.

As Dr. Debra Lister of Douglas, Georgia explains, "It's so far for our individuals here to get to a specialist. Some of these individuals just can't travel - some of our elderly and poor folks couldn't have created the trip. An awful lot of them would not have received care."

Thanks to telemedicine, Lister's clinic is typically able to connect sufferers by way of video conferencing with a specialist inside two months. That's just about half the time it takes to get an in-person appointment with a specialist.

This new access makes Medigap Insurance even much more useful. You most likely recognize that Medicare doesn't pay for all of your healthcare costs. Medicare only pays for 80 % of a pre-approved fee for physician services. Medigap plans not only pick up the remaining 20 percent, but also support when specialists charge much more than Medicare's pre-approved payment. With the correct Medigap coverage, you could have access to the very best specialists no matter how far away their practice is or how pricey their services are.

Telemedicine Provides A Bridge To Improved Care

At the University of Nebraska Medical Center, an interactive video method is bringing Dr. Thomas Magnuson face-to-face with his sufferers in nursing homes about the state. He can communicate with household members and the staff at the nursing homes in the very same way. Magnuson, who's a psychiatrist, says, "We have a lot of isolated locations. We just had a massive patient population out there that wasn't being observed."

Magnuson uses video conferencing to see and hear his patients just as if he was in the room with them. This technology can link specialists from urban centers with rural physicians and their patients can get the care they will need when they want it. Even far more exceptional, technologies is permitting surgeons to perform "lengthy-distance" operations by making use of remote-controlled robots.

Quite a few rural hospitals already have some kind of telemedicine, but the growth of telemedicine technology is expected to continue. Just as telemedicine is bridging the distance between sufferers and specialists, Medicare Supplement Insurance is eliminating the economic barriers that have separated folks from the healthcare they want.

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