Mobile hotspot devices for healthcare nonprofits not only impact how providers communicate with each other and their patients, they can advance the health of our communities by empowering people to adopt new ways of managing and receiving health services.
Many healthcare nonprofits already use mobile hotspots for telehealth and remote care, allowing their patients to access services regardless of cultural barriers, location, or income limitations. The Center for Hearing and Speech in St. Louis, Missouri is a perfect example. The nonprofit’s leadership considered Internet access a natural extension of the Center’s mission to empower communication for people with hearing loss, so in 2020, they began providing patients with Wi-Fi hotspot devices and tablets to use at home.
Low-cost, quick-to-deploy, and highly portable, mobile hotspots for telehealth bring patients, doctors, and staff together with reliable, high-speed Internet. Put a mobile hotspot device in a patient’s home, and they can immediately connect with support groups, specialists, and care teams. Let care workers take a mobile hotspot with them, and they can stay connected to key resources and other members of the care team wherever they go.
Mobile Hotspots for Telehealth Help Advance Healthcare Equity
Mobile Internet for healthcare nonprofits helps organizations bridge gaps in Internet access and support digitally-enabled, equitable care for all. Here are four important ways hotspot devices can make a difference for your organization and the people you serve:
1. Improve collaboration within your organization.
Mobile hotspots for telehealth can facilitate collaboration between onsite and remote healthcare providers, coordinators, and other team members, allowing them to combine their knowledge and learning to provide better services to patients.
2. Connect patients to providers and their communities.
Mobile hotspots provide your team with a simple tool to minimize the impact of complex obstacles – such as distance, finances, mobility, and cultural barriers – on patient healthcare access. You can expand the reach of your services to underserved and under-connected communities by equipping patients with reliable, low-cost Internet hotspots that they can use to stay connected to their providers, families, and health resources.
3. Make remote healthcare locations feel less remote.
Do your staff members travel to places where reliable high-speed Internet is a rare luxury? Mobile hotspots for telehealth nonprofits make life easier for staff working on the road or in locations without quality Internet coverage such as rural towns, tribal lands, and urban deserts.
Mobile Internet services, such as the mobile hotspot devices and high-speed service offered by Mobile Citizen, can be a game changer in areas like these where community members have limited access to healthcare services. Mobile Internet from Mobile Citizen includes unlimited high-speed (up to 5G LTE) data for as low as $120 per year. Provided exclusively to nonprofits, schools, libraries, and social welfare organizations, these hotspots allow nonprofit healthcare providers to quickly access health records and images from remote locations without worrying about slow downloads or maxing out their data plans.
4. Increase patient telehealth adoption.
According to an article by TechTarget’s Xtelligent Healthcare Media, digital equity and health equity go hand in hand: “In healthcare, the digital divide can lead to disparities in patient portal adoption, telehealth care access, or ability to utilize patient-facing practice management software, like online appointment schedulers.”
By helping more of your patients or community members leverage virtual healthcare, you have the opportunity to widen your healthcare nonprofit’s impact on patient wellness. Mobile hotspots for telehealth can enhance communication between providers and patients while helping patients take advantage of new ways to manage their health online.
Telehealth Adoption in Underserved Communities
Many underserved and at-risk communities don’t have reliable access to quality Internet where they live. WiFi hotspots at coffee shops and libraries offer free Internet access, but these public spaces certainly aren’t ideal for private telehealth conversations.
According to an American Medical Association blog post, telehealth is critical to the future of health care, but it must continue to evolve into something that’s easier for everyone to use.
By bridging the digital divide in healthcare, we can minimize the division between communities who have access to digital health technologies and broadband and those who have limited access either due to a lack of digital skills or lack of access to quality broadband.
To explore how your healthcare nonprofit can use mobile hotspots for telehealth to improve patient satisfaction and overall health standards in the communities you serve, please contact our experts in the Mobile Citizen Customer Service Center at 877-216-9603 or visit our Get Started page.