X-rays From Your Living Room
Did you know that you can get a professional X-ray done from the comfort of your living room, bedroom, or kitchen? In honor of National X-ray Week, we'd like to discuss the sheer potential that in-home X-rays provide in transitioning our healthcare system to the innovation that it desperately calls for.
There is a common misconception that if you need imaging done for an injury or medical issue, it requires a trip to the emergency room or your local urgent care. However, with in-home healthcare providers like EZaccessMD now available to patients as a telehealth + in-home benefit for employer health plans, that is no longer the case.
In-home X-ray's provide outstanding advantages not only to the patient, but to employers as well. Here are the top 3 reasons to incorporate in-home X-ray's into your benefits plan:
1. Cost
Nearly 70% of ER visits are not considered emergencies. With the average ER visit costing over $2,000, Americans lose approximately $47 billion a year receiving care in the wrong place. But despite the costs, this trend continues to hurt employers and employees across the nation.
When an X-ray is needed, employers have two options to provide:
a). Pay $2,000 for an X-ray at the ER.
b). Pay $12 for a subscription for in-home care for your employees using a health benefit such as EZaccessMD.
2. Convenient Care
By 2025, millennials will make up 75% of our workforce . Why is this important? Millennials expect convenience. Leaving the house to go sit in the waiting room is not convenient. After growing up with services such as DoorDash, Instacart, and Amazon, you're asking this generation to leave their house? Forget it (read previous blog). Bring the X-ray to them.
3. Culture
Healthy employees creates a more productive workplace with a happier workforce. By providing higher access to quality care, employees require fewer sick days, recover more quickly from ailments, and are less at risk for long-term illnesses. Employers are becoming more open to going beyond traditional wellness programs and incentives. To develop a healthy culture in your workplace, consider offering services that address your employees’ stressors (cost + convenience).
During National Radiologic Technology Week, an annual recognition of the vital role that imaging professionals play in delivering quality healthcare, EZaccessMD is highlighting the critical and sometimes life-saving care that our radiologic technologists (“rad-techs”) deliver to patients anytime, anywhere.
One of those esteemed partners is Mobile Images in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Founded 33 years ago by CEO & Co-Owner, Rick Merchant, the business was started on the cusp of the mobile X-ray revolution with the original goal of servicing members of the elderly community who faced significant barriers to accessing necessary imaging.
Today, Mobile Images’ X-ray services are available to a wide demographic of patients in need due to the company’s partnership with EZaccessMD. When a physician orders an X-ray for a patient, Mobile Images dispatches one of their qualified rad-techs for imaging, and patients have a diagnosis from a radiologist within an hour of their X-ray and an immediate follow-up consult with the EZ physician.
Tyler Merchant, head of marketing at Mobile Images, says the ability to send a rad-tech to a patient’s home has proven to be invaluable on several occasions. “Some of the patients our technicians treat have severe fractures and moving can be extremely painful. We’re grateful to spare them the discomfort by coming to them.”
Furthermore, the Merchants have seen the benefits of this enhanced accessibility firsthand by adopting EZaccessMD into their own employee health plans. Tyler says that the service has been a huge driver of employee retention at Mobile Images over the past year. “Our employees are saving money, and so are we. They don’t have to pay for an emergency room visit when a quick phone consultation could determine an effective treatment plan.”
Making this benefit available to their employees allows them to offer the same quality healthcare that they show their patients every day. “Our rad-techs demonstrate so much care and empathy for our patients. It takes a gentle heart to do what they do, and offering them this service is just one of the ways that we thank them.”
With that said, we'd like to take this time to thank every X-ray Technologist in the nation for the essential role they play in delivering quality healthcare. Your work matters. Everyday that you show up, even when it's hard and you don't feel like it, you are making a difference. Thanks to you, EZaccessMD’s X-ray services are now available to companies and their families across 29 states.
