Prenatal care has evolved and can be provided to pregnant women and their babies from the comfort of their homes. Care is accessed via digital devices such as smartphones, iPads, and laptops via audio and video calls, text messaging, and other forms of chatting. This defines telemedicine in prenatal care.
While telemedicine in prenatal care has its pros and cons and has recorded positive health outcomes, is it the way to go for high-risk pregnancies?
A high-risk pregnancy is one where the mother, the fetus, or both have an increased risk of health problems or adverse outcomes before, during, or after delivery.
Your pregnancy may be considered high-risk if you:
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Typically, while prenatal care is needed for all pregnant women, it is crucial for women with high-risk pregnancies. This population of women require special monitoring or care throughout pregnancy to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Prenatal care in the United States is accessed by 4 million women annually and only 6 to 8 percent of these pregnancies experience high-risk complications. This figure is a lot, running into hundreds of thousands.
Hence, women with high-risk pregnancies will require increased number of prenatal visits, monitoring, tests and examinations, and consultations with their healthcare provider and specialists.
Telemedicine in prenatal care means adopting videoconferences, at-home monitoring, and virtual consultations to replace in-person visits and monitoring at the healthcare facility.
However, not fully. It is impossible to completely rule out in-person visits during prenatal care. Instead, Telemedicine should be seen as a model of care that enhances access to and delivery of health care. The question, however remains, "can high-risk pregnancies benefit from telemedicine visits?"
High-risk patients usually have to work closely with their doctors and care team to prevent, reduce, and manage complications. Generally, they require highly specialized and comprehensive care to manage the several health conditions that may be affecting or may potentially affect the mother, unborn baby or both.
Research shows that prenatal care via telemedicine can be modified for women with high-risk pregnancies. This requires more remote visits to their local OB doctor and other specialists, fetal testing and ultrasound examinations.
The study also suggests that telemedicine is feasible with special recommendations given for certain conditions and services including:
It may seem as though these recommendations have been implemented. A study shows that patients with health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes were instructed on how to monitor their blood pressure and sugar levels respectively at home. The results were transmitted to their providers which facilitated active participation of patients in their care and self-efficacy. Subsequently, results of the study showed similar pregnancy outcomes between telemedicine and conventional prenatal care.
Remote consultations with specialists could also encourage care and delivery of high-risk patients in nearby local hospitals.
As a supplementary health care service, our team at My Virtual Physician is available to help guide you through your pregnancy and answer any questions that may arise. We also help with electronically sending orders for tests and examinations while you wait for an appointment with a local OB doctor.
We are in network with many insurance health plans including Medicaid, Medicare, United HealthCare and Blue Cross.
