Another example of telemedicine’s growing presence: Two Detroit-area health systems are piloting Web-based virtual patient office visits this year. Four years ago some California health systems did the same thing, reporting success in terms of reducing costs and improving access.

And another example: Rather than wasting valuable time waiting in the ER, patients can be under the watchful eye of a clinician, thanks to biomonitoring technology.

Source article

Source article

“There is mounting evidence that more people are using telemedicine,” reports Candice Choi for the Associated Press. The evidence she cites consists of the following:

• The number of companies manufacturing home telecare devices in the last three years has tripled to 15
• The Veterans Administration plans to double the number of patients it puts on home telecare to 20,000 over the next year
• About 3,500 hospitals, clinics, schools and other facilities use telemedicine today, up from 2,000 six years ago
• A study by Kaiser Permanente found that telemedicine reduced hospitalizations in a group of 100 patients by 200 days between May 1996 to November 1997
• VNA (Visiting Nurses Association) patients at one location who started using home telecare saw a 29 percent reduction in emergency room visits and a 37 percent reduction in hospitalizations
• Three insurers have agreed to cover the costs associated with the VNA program just mentioned
• A growing number of states with a lot of rural areas, including Minnesota, offer Medicaid coverage for telemedicine
• Some 40 agencies in New York state employ about 1,000 home telecare units, which will rise to about 1,500 after the state Health Department rolls out $4 million in grants this year to help agencies invest in the technology

A spokeswoman for the Homecare Association of New York State told Choi: “It saves time, money, can be done instantaneously. This is going to become as common as a cell phone in our industry.”

eICU

Source article

An intensivist physician practice of nine doctors and a dozen nurses, called Advanced ICU Care, uses Visicu’s eICU to bring scarce intensive-care specialists to hospitals that otherwise could not afford or attract them. Bedside cameras and microphones plus the hospital’s EMR let the intensivists do everything except physically touch patients in remote hospitals. The system also alerts the intensivist if a patient’s vital signs exceed a threshold.

The practice typically serves hospitals with fewer than 40 beds or those that cannot attract enough intensivists to staff their own operations. It claims nurses love it because they can hit a bedside button and speak with an intensivist around the clock; intensivists like the presentation of a patient’s entire history and monitoring results on screen; and patients love it “because they know a doctor (always) is watching over them” and because they can remain in local hospitals closer to home, family, and friends.

E-visits

Source article

The University of Michigan plans to make Web visits available through 13 participating doctors next month, in a one-year pilot program. Henry Ford Health System clinics will begin a six-month pilot in July. Patients will be able to seek nonurgent care from their doctors by completing a Web form. Doctors will post their responses on the same site. U-M will charge US$30, Henry Ford $20 per visit, which patients will have to pay for since few insurers cover the cost of online visits. Henry Ford plans to expand eVisits to the rest of its system in 2007. U-M says it might expand its program to other family practice offices if the pilot shows improvements in care or a savings in time or money.

A 2002 study of a pilot by Blue Shield of California and RelayHealth conducted by investigators at the University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University found that online consultations reduced total health spending by $3.69 per patient per month. Two-thirds of patients in that study rated the experience as good to excellent compared with an in-office visit. And more than half of patients thought online consultations improved access to their physicians.

Monitoring Patients in the ED Waiting Room

Source article

With a US$3.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, emergency clinicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have begun giving waiting patients waist packs with a Linux-based handheld computer, sensors, and transmitters. The system monitors the wearer’s vital signs — heart rates and blood-oxygen levels — and enables staff to rapidly locate the wearer.

The pilot program, using ten waist packs, is a joint project of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and MIT. A three-lead electrocardiogram and a finger sensor transmit readings to a nurse’s computer screen. Ultrasound transmitters and receivers monitor the patient’s whereabouts, rather than RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, because ultrasound cannot penetrate walls and can therefore locate a patient to a particular room.