2020 Communication Tools for Patients and HCP's
2020 Communication Tools for Patients and HCP's
Posted 3/30/2020
TELEMEDICINE is a new means of maintaining communication with your healthcare team. While we are all used to secured emails or phone calls with nurses and doctors, using video conferencing on a computer to conduct the ENTIRE visit is new to most patients.
Practices and organizations will all do it differently; in my practice this is how we do it:
We will contact you to ask if you would like to make your visit a TELEMEDICINE visit
You can still come to the office if you prefer but right now visitors are not allowed to accompany you to the visit because of COVID 19 concerns.
If you choose TELEMEDICINE, then we will send you a ZOOM link via email with a meeting setup. You can download the APP on your phone or the program on your computer. You will logon before the visit using the link and you will be placed in the "waiting room". Then I will logon at the time of the visit (although I may be late, it's still a doctor's office after all!) and we can see each other and talk using the computer (or phone) camera and microphone. I will be able to share my screen so I can show you the scans that I have for you. If you have a physical finding of some sort, you will be able to share your screen as well.
When we are finished, I will write a note and send it to your healthcare professionals, as we did previously.
If you have scans, then it can be uploaded into a cloud program called "nucleus.io". You can create your own account, upload the CD of images, and share it with me.
Even without the concerns and restricitons right now due to COVID 19, patients may find TELEMEDICINE to be a convenient, distance-saving, and time-saving way to communicate with their physicians and other healthcare providers.
--Eric Liu, MD, FACS, Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers Midtown, Denver, CO
