The Truth about Telehealth: Why a Revolutionary Industry Has Failed to Deliver and How It Can Still Be a Game-Changer for Healthcare, Paperback/Larry D. Jones

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Description In our current healthcare system, many people and employers are struggling to find affordable, convenient care. Costs continue to rise, and the growing physician shortage has led to increasingly long wait times to get care. To address these issues, we must find innovative ways to facilitate hassle-free, cost-effective access to doctors. Technology has revolutionized almost every industry in the modern world. It changes the way we drive, the way we communicate, the way we eat and sleep, and even the fabric of the traditional 8 to 5 workdays. It is hard to imagine not being able to instantly text or call someone on the other side of the country or not being able to check your email while in the car. Almost every aspect of modern life has been made faster and more convenient through telecommunications technology. Except health care. Even as technology has improved, access to health care has worsened for many Americans. The Affordable Care Act may have increased the number of people with health insurance, but the fact is that health care remains unaffordable and inconvenient for most people. An increasing percentage of health insurance plans have expensive premiums, sky-high deductibles, and costly copays. People are paying for care that they can hardly afford to use. Plus, physician shortages mean absurdly long wait times, especially in crowded cities. Patients are resorting to urgent cares and emergency rooms, making care even more expensive. Patients in rural areas face an even greater challenge: rural hospitals are closing, meaning long drive times and limited access to specialists in their area. Employers are also struggling with rising costs. Unable to sustain their current benefit levels, they have been forced to reduce benefits and shift health care costs to employees through higher premiums, deductibles, and copays. Technological advances have done little to help these worrying trends. But there is a solution that could help millions of Americans get