Making Communities Safe and Healthy
The APHA recognizes the first full week of April as National Public Health Week. The 2021 theme (“Building Bridges to Better Health”) reflects public health’s top priority to make communities safe and healthy. During this annual week of public health awareness, the APHA aims to address and enlighten the U.S. on the causes of poor health and disease risk in everyday environments as well as encourage everyone to become advocates for positive change. As the association highlights, building connections is more important than ever to ensure the health and safety of all communities.
How Virtual Care Helps Build Bridges to Better Health
Virtual care builds connections between patients and providers by expanding patient access to care while also improving the level and frequency of care which patients receive. Synzi’s patient experience helps agencies build bridges to better health by:
- Delivering care and clinical support in a more convenient manner: Virtual visits and secure messaging remove the barriers of travel time and transportation and make it easy for agencies to provide more frequent touchpoints to their patients. Patients can receive ongoing communications to help drive better engagement and adherence. Patients can also use the platform to receive answers to questions and concerns in real-time.
- Addressing hesitation in receiving mental/behavioral support: Patients can use their devices to participate in care from the comfort of their own home, thus addressing any potential concerns for those patients who are wary of receiving home visits. Patients appreciate the ongoing care and communications. In between in-person visits, specialists can find out if a change in medication is proving effective or if the plan of care needs to be revised. Visits to the ER and rehospitalizations can be minimized as patients receive the support they need, when they need it most.
- Monitoring and managing high-risk and rising-risk patients virtually: Patients can easily share their vital sign using their smartphones, tablets, and Bluetoothed-enabled devices (such as a thermometer, blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, glucose meter, and scale). Patients will not need to be interrupted by – or wait for – staff to arrive on a daily basis or multiple times a day to take one’s vital signs. The remote patient monitoring solution gives patients more freedom and flexibility in their day-to-day life while enabling providers to better monitor their patients.
- Deepening understanding with interpretation and translation: The touchpoints (e.g., timing, frequency, and messaging) can be customized to patient’s condition(s) and An interpreter can participate in the virtual visit on-demand for a patient whose primary language is not English. And, the series of ongoing messages can also be translated into the patient’s language of choice.