Medical advancements are forever fueled by new technology.
An MRI can give surgeons a window inside patients’ bodies, while an insulin pump lets people with diabetes care for themselves without painful and exhausting injections several times per day.
But for more than 15 years, new forms of advanced and everyday tech have been making patient-doctor communication more accessible than ever.
Telemedicine, as it’s called, can be a house call over Skype or FaceTime. It also can be a heartbeat monitor that sends real-time data to a 24/7 surveillance service.
It’s a deceptively important change, with the American Telemedicine Association reporting that more than half of all U.S. hospitals use some form of telemedicine. That means health care is now within easier reach of rural residents, or anyone in urgent need of medical help.
Karen S. Jackson, M.S., R.N., is director of TeleHealth Medical Center outreach at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center."Telemedicine not only helps to meet the patient care mission, but also supports education and research," says Jackson.
Karen Jackson, director of TeleHealth Medical Center outreach at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, says accessibility is especially important when it comes to getting specialists where they’re needed most.
“Our objective is to assess and improve the patient’s health while at their current location,” says Jackson. “This has increased our ability to meet the requests of regional hospitals and physicians to collaborate in providing specialized health care within their community.”
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points to another bonus to telemedicine: cost-effectiveness.
According to the CDC, the emergency room is not only the least efficient way to provide non-emergent care, it’s also the most expensive. One ER visit can cost a couple thousand dollars, many times the $130 to $190 average price tag for a family physician visit. At the same time, an e-visit’s bill can be as little as $40.
And that doesn’t even consider the excess earnings saved: Remote access means less time off work, less money spent on child care and less travel.
For routine appointments, the miles and cost can really add up, so patients who live in the country will find videoconferencing with their doctors an attractive option.
Wexner Medical Center’s telestroke network, for example, gives all patients within the network access to a vascular neurologist and time-sensitive treatment while in their local emergency department.
“Less than half of the people in the network are required to travel to the medical center for additional care, which saves significantly on emergent travel expenses,” says Jackson.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s psychiatry, neurology, cardiology and neonatology departments offer remote options to Ohio patients who live at greater distances from the hospital’s location just south of downtown Columbus.
The hospital’s connected regional facilities are equipped to be telemedicine portals in an effort to prevent the need for a daylong trip to get a simple, but necessary, checkup.
Breanne Taylor is manager of regional development at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Nationwide Children's foray into telemedicine is only at the pilot stage, but the current programs are intended to bring the hospital closer to a more robust strategy.
Breanne Taylor, manager of regional development, notes that these are simply pilot programs for now, but it’s the hospital’s hope that they’ll “inform a larger telemedicine strategy for the future.”
“Our neurology patients, for example,” says Taylor, “attend initial appointments in-person with a neurologist, but follow-up visits can occur via a telemedicine portal from our Ironton clinic to a neurologist at our main campus in Columbus.”
For now, telemedicine will likely continue growing as an eminent source of cheap and reachable health care. At the same time, it’s hard to say whether doctors will welcome swift expansion in the face of inconsistent insurance policies.
“Doctors are hesitant to expand telemedicine services when they are uncertain of payment,” says Jackson. “Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies often have different coverage terms for telemedicine as compared to in-person visits – including who can provide the services and where the provider and the patient can be located.”
Patient demand, however, could change that.
“Patients wholeheartedly embrace telemedicine and interact with the specialist as though they were physically in the room with them,” says Jackson. “They clearly appreciate the timely access to physicians and other health care providers without the need to travel to a distant site.”
With cheaper, more convenient healthcare with comparable quality to in-person visits, it might just be a matter of waiting for insurance providers to catch up.
Zach Maiorana is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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