Telehealth Provides Access to Recovery For Those Injured During COVID-19
As COVID-19 progresses, companies are seeing all kinds of closings. Currently, 28 states have partial or partial state asylum orders, and 23 states have closed all non-essential businesses. These closings are drawing attention to which companies are considered essential, with many facilities serving injured workers, including physical therapy centers, closing their doors in the name of public health.
Without these services, injured workers may not be able to make progress in their recovery. Since slow recovery is considered one of the biggest challenges in the industry by workers’ compensation professionals, the inability of injured workers to receive care for an undetermined time should be of grave concern to anyone handling claims and care of injured workers.
“There is no doubt that care will be interrupted across the board,” said Mary O’Donoghue, director of operations for MedRisk. “Continuity of care is critical, and that’s one of the things that we put a lot of effort into making sure we’re focused on.”
Following the closure of businesses, telemedicine is intensifying to provide care to injured workers. Since COVID-19 began and requests to stay home started, companies providing telemedicine services have seen a massive shift to digital care.
“It’s the only option in many cases,” said Michelle Despres, vice president and national leader for physiotherapy products at OneCall. “We want to make sure they have access to the care they need. We want to make sure they have the ability to work with exceptionally trained people. It is about improving the person, making the person more functional, and allowing them to return to their healthy life and normal work. ”
Telemedicine programs have stepped in to help injured workers with everything from ongoing physical therapy appointments to making sure their medical devices are working correctly.
Some programs are discovering that they can adapt existing telemedicine services to serve as a vehicle for continued care during COVID-19. At the time of the coronavirus, this is our only option.
