Telehealth News and Market Developments
ABC 4: Intermountain Pediatric Telehealth Consults Make Expert Care Accessible for the Youngest Patients (8/25) – Local hospital emergency department doctors at Alliance board member Intermountain Healthcare can now connect with Primary Children’s Hospital’s emergency department, trauma, and pediatric ICU specialists through a telehealth video consult, which is available 24/7. During a six month trial period of this new telehealth pediatric service, about half of those pediatric emergency patients were able to safely stay in their local communities, and about 80 percent of pediatric emergency, trauma and ICU patients who’ve been transferred to Primary Children’s were discharged within 24 hours.
Healthcare IT News: MaineGeneral Hits Congestive Heart Failure Readmission Rate of Zero Percent Using RPM (8/23) – MaineGeneral Health had high, rising readmission rates for congestive heart failure (CHF). To address this issue, the health system launched a remote patient monitoring pilot in January 2020, working with vendor Health Recovery Solutions to monitor CHF patients after discharge from the hospital. Upon discharge, patients often need support to understand their symptoms and warning signs after returning home. Remote patient monitoring allows patients to monitor their blood pressure, weight, oxygen saturation, symptoms and medication adherence in real time at home with a dedicated registered nurse who actively conducts outreach to patients as needed.
Forbes: How Telemedicine Startup DocGo Wants To Make Healthcare Accessible In Every Sense (8/23) – DocGo, a telemedicine startup, provides mobile health care and deploys licensed practical nurses and paramedics onsite, delivering care under the direct supervision of a nurse practitioner. The key component of the successful delivery model is DocGo’s open primary dispatching and patient electronic health records (EHR) system. That highly efficient, tech-first solution, plus the lower cost labor model, allows the company to deliver high quality health care.
Optometry Times: Navigating Telehealth in a Post-pandemic Era (8/23) – In optometry, telehealth provides synchronous and asynchronous technologies and non-face-to-face telehealth for the eye, adnexa, visual system, and related systemic health care services. While telehealth cannot replace face-to-face visits for services such as refractive tests, photographs, and screenings due to inherent limitations in the technology, there are several clinically appropriate care use cases for telehealth in this specialty. This includes glaucoma compliance, follow-up of patients with dry eye and acute infections, and checkups of patients with age-related macular degeneration, among others.
Health Leaders: Understanding the Value of a Hub-and-Spoke Telemedicine Program (8/23) – Hub-and-spoke telemedicine networks can extend specialty services and education into rural areas and improve clinical outcomes and provider efficiencies. Hub-and-spoke telemedicine platforms typically revolve around a large academic health system at the center (hub), whose specialists use the technology to help treat patients in rural locations (spokes) and assist providers in care delivery. The platform can also be used in what is called the Project ECHO model to educate rural providers on topics ranging from care management to new types of treatments, allowing them to care for more of their patients and reduce referrals and transfers. This model can help rural hospitals and clinics improve clinical outcomes and their bottom line, while enabling teaching hospitals and specialists to extend their reach and help more patients and providers.
Healthcare IT News: Why Telehealth is More Than Just a Pandemic Trend (8/22) – In a discussion with Healthcare IT News, Liz Fobare, vice president of Tebra, a vendor of cloud-based clinical and practice management software, spells out the growing role of telemedicine during the pandemic, where health care goes with telehealth, how change may affect physicians, and what virtual care might look like 10 years from now.
Newsweek: Three (More) Reasons to Reimburse for Telehealth Visits (8/22) – Hospitals, physician practices and health care networks built robust telehealth programs during the pandemic that continue to improve patient health and access to health care for the most vulnerable patient populations. Payers should continue to reimburse telehealth visits due to the flexibility it provides for employees. This improved flexibility could attract more employees and get more people back into the workforce.
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