Fitness, health, and wellness are essential for everyone. You spend countless hours training your body and mind. You invest your heart and soul into keeping fit and staying healthy. Part of any fitness/health regimen is checking with your doctor before changing your diet and taking on additional exercise routines.
But you’re also busy; whether it’s taking a moment to spend some quality time with your family or working to provide for them, making the time to see a doctor can be tough.
You’ve probably heard of various telehealth or teletherapy services in the past. Maybe you’ve been curious about seeing a doctor online for some time. Regardless, seeing a doctor virtually can help conveniently address your fitness concerns and provide access to other beneficial services at the same time. Here are five aspects of telehealth that can greatly benefit you.
5. Treatment for a variety of non-emergency conditions
A significant benefit of online healthcare is the sheer variety of non-emergency conditions a doctor can help treat or monitor remotely. These conditions range from colds and infections to sinus issues, headaches, rashes, and allergies. They may also treat more severe or chronic issues like hypertension, asthma, diabetes, ED and urinary tract infections. Some online doctors can prescribe antibiotics and answer pressing or routine health questions quickly and easily. Ultimately, an online doctor can potentially offer similar treatment and care for common ailments, eventually saving you a trip to the local physician.
4. Access to mental health care
Taking care of your mental health is crucial, but sometimes people don’t get the help they need. Mental health impacts everything you do in your daily life. Depression, stress, anxiety, and panic all contribute negatively to physical health. Yet there is a stigma and general idea in society that treating mental health isn’t as much of a priority as treating physical health. This is patently untrue. Studies show that depression and other mental health conditions can increase the risk of severe and chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Mental health can be impacted by a number of internal and external forces, including poor work-life balance and stress. They’re also fairly common, with the CDC reporting that one in five Americans experiencing some form of a mental health concern in a year. Fortunately, telemedicine is equipped to address mental health issues as well. When you speak with a doctor online about these concerns, be as open and honest as possible and talk to them candidly. This kind of telemedicine is known as teletherapy and can treat the following conditions:
- Anxiety and anxiety attacks
- Chest pain related to anxiety
- Panic disorder
- Stress
- Depression
There are many others that can be treated, along with plenty of additional resources. The key is communication, asking questions, and asking your doctor about possible treatments.
3. Online prescription management
In most cases, getting a prescription requires a visit to your doctor first. One of the more convenient benefits of telemedicine is the ability to get your prescriptions fulfilled by a reputable doctor without the need to physically visit the doctor’s office. After your doctor’s visit, the doctor will send the prescription to your local pharmacy, where you can pick it up at your convenience. In this manner, you’re able to get your necessary medications filled while conveniently consulting with the doctor from the comfort of your home.
2. Easy to schedule and follow-up on appointments
Finding the time for a doctor’s appointment isn’t always easy. It doesn’t just depend on your schedule—the doctor themselves needs to have an opening available to see you. Access can be a real problem when it comes to doctors. With online doctors, appointments are often available the same day. It’s very easy to schedule a virtual doctor appointment as well. Simply search/browse the selection of available doctors in your state with the website search function, select the doctor that will suit your needs, and book the appointment. Later, following up with the doctor is merely a matter of repeating the process. Throughout the process, the service will provide information on whether it takes your insurance or requires a flat payment for the visit.
1. Online urgent care
It may seem kind of strange, but telemedicine often offers urgent care services. An emergency room and an urgent care on not the same thing. Emergency rooms are intended to treat serious/severe conditions that require expert and immediate care.
Heart attacks, strokes, grievous injuries, and similar conditions fall into this category. Urgent care is a more specialized and focused healthcare area. It’s equipped to handle medical issues that aren’t as severe as something requiring emergency care, but something a little more acute than a cold or flu.
Allergic reactions, nausea, lacerations, migraines, pink eye, bad fevers, insect bites, diarrhea, mononucleosis, back pain, and pneumonia are all conditions urgent care can treat. So how does all that translate to telemedicine via an online doctor’s visit?
Basically, you just need to make sure you have a working device (a tablet, laptop, computer, or phone) with a good quality microphone and speakers/headphones. A thermometer, blood pressure cuff, and other monitoring devices will help but aren’t strictly necessary.