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Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic mandated rapid transition from face-to-face encounters to teleneurology visits. While teleneurology is regularly used in acute stroke care, its application in other branches of neurology was limited. Here we review how the recent pandemic has created a paradigm shif...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7241381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32460041 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2020.116930 |
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author | Roy, Bhaskar Nowak, Richard J. Roda, Ricardo Khokhar, Babar Patwa, Huned S. Lloyd, Thomas Rutkove, Seward B. |
author_facet | Roy, Bhaskar Nowak, Richard J. Roda, Ricardo Khokhar, Babar Patwa, Huned S. Lloyd, Thomas Rutkove, Seward B. |
author_sort | Roy, Bhaskar |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic mandated rapid transition from face-to-face encounters to teleneurology visits. While teleneurology is regularly used in acute stroke care, its application in other branches of neurology was limited. Here we review how the recent pandemic has created a paradigm shift in caring for patients with chronic neurological disorders and how academic institutions have responded to the present need. METHOD: Literature review was performed to examine the recent changes in health policies. Number of outpatient visits and televisits in the Department of Neurology was reviewed from Yale University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to examine the road to transition to televisit. RESULTS: The federal government and the insurance providers extended their supports during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several rules and regulations regarding teleneurology were revised and relaxed to address the current need. New technologies for video conferencing were incorporated. The transition to televisits went smoothly in both the institutions and number of face-to-face encounters decreased dramatically along with a rapid rise in televisits within 2 weeks of the declaration of national emergency. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE: The need for “social distancing” during the COVID-19 pandemic has created a major surge in the number of teleneurology visits, which will probably continue for the next few months. It may have initiated a more permanent transition to virtual technology incorporated medical care. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7241381 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-72413812020-05-21 Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care Roy, Bhaskar Nowak, Richard J. Roda, Ricardo Khokhar, Babar Patwa, Huned S. Lloyd, Thomas Rutkove, Seward B. J Neurol Sci Clinical Short Communication BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic mandated rapid transition from face-to-face encounters to teleneurology visits. While teleneurology is regularly used in acute stroke care, its application in other branches of neurology was limited. Here we review how the recent pandemic has created a paradigm shift in caring for patients with chronic neurological disorders and how academic institutions have responded to the present need. METHOD: Literature review was performed to examine the recent changes in health policies. Number of outpatient visits and televisits in the Department of Neurology was reviewed from Yale University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to examine the road to transition to televisit. RESULTS: The federal government and the insurance providers extended their supports during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several rules and regulations regarding teleneurology were revised and relaxed to address the current need. New technologies for video conferencing were incorporated. The transition to televisits went smoothly in both the institutions and number of face-to-face encounters decreased dramatically along with a rapid rise in televisits within 2 weeks of the declaration of national emergency. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE: The need for “social distancing” during the COVID-19 pandemic has created a major surge in the number of teleneurology visits, which will probably continue for the next few months. It may have initiated a more permanent transition to virtual technology incorporated medical care. Elsevier B.V. 2020-07-15 2020-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7241381/ /pubmed/32460041 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2020.116930 Text en © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Clinical Short Communication Roy, Bhaskar Nowak, Richard J. Roda, Ricardo Khokhar, Babar Patwa, Huned S. Lloyd, Thomas Rutkove, Seward B. Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title | Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title_full | Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title_fullStr | Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title_full_unstemmed | Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title_short | Teleneurology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A step forward in modernizing medical care |
title_sort | teleneurology during the covid-19 pandemic: a step forward in modernizing medical care |
topic | Clinical Short Communication |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7241381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32460041 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2020.116930 |
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