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Bikers and Teddy Bears: 9th Annual Teddy Bear Ride

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biketeddys

photo credit: Jeff Schrier | MLive.com

Starting at 2 p.m. this Saturday, children in the pediatric center of Covenant Healthcare in Saginaw, MI, which is a customer using HitCast, an earlier release of what has become our swyMed solution, will be receiving between 200 and 400 teddy bears courtesy of the Great Lakes Harley Davidson and Tri-County Michigan Hogs.

This is a fantastic tradition that’s been as wonderful for the kids in the hospital as for the bikers giving of their time and resources.  However, the children generally are not able to go outside the hospital to see the bikers arriving with teddy bears often attached to the bikes, or to see them dismounting and coming in.  Covenant has, in the past, utilized some of the telemedicine capability to stream video of the bikers arriving into the pediatric center.

Please follow these links for more of the story, and be inspired to do something similar in your area if you can:
http://www.abc12.com/story/26164728/ninth-annual-teddy-bear-ride-to-take-place-this-saturday
http://www.minbcnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=929540#.U-TSmvm-2-0

5 Things I Learned on ATA’s This Month in Telemedicine Webinar

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As with last month, this is largely geared to updates about legislation along with reminders about the upcoming Fall Forum conference in Palm Springs, CA, which I’ll have to consider as I live out Orange County.

This month’s takeaways are a little more subdued than last month which had some pretty big news (see here).  The ATA had just done a survey on online consultations and had over 500 respondents.

1)  45% of respondents are using telemedicine TODAY.  This is fantastic news and, in my mind, is possibly underreported because, as Mr. Linkous and Mr. Capistrant pointed out on the last call (and pointed out in our 3 Things from last month), nearly every institution is already using some form of telemedicine and the boards don’t realize it.

2)  Specialty Care and Behavioral Health were the leading segments.  Not terribly surprising, as specialty care often needs to use leading edge tools to leverage resources for special care, and behavioral health lends itself well to an old-school videoconferencing set up (patient and doctor meet via video), leading to less push-back on its use while providing maximum benefit to both patients and providers.  The industry will have to really work, I think, to make sure providers and CDOs are aware of the more specialized applications and the benefits to be had.  Telemedice will not yield a large harvest if we only pick the low-hanging fruit.  As if to prove that point:

3)  77% use video, 57% use audio and 28% use medical peripherals.  Just over a quarter are using peripherals, while three times that are using video.  Being at a video-primary solution provider: Yay!  Being a proponent of telemedicine as a whole: We can do better.  Even the video-primary medical solutions offer a lot of specialized or integrated offerings that provide more than just adding a visual element to distance care.  Again, the question is, how do we get this to the doctors and CDOs?

4) Of the 55% of respondents that replied they are not using telemedicine today, 75% plan to implement it very soon.  I present that as Exhibit A to the tipping point naysayers…although I concede that if you responded to a survey about telemedicine from the American Telemedicine Association, you’re probably already predisposed to an interest in telemedicine.  Having said that, interest in telemedicine has been on the rise, and 75% of that growing crowd being interested in giving it a shot can only be a good thing.

4)  Mr. Linkous pointed out something toward the end that I assumed would be a primary driver (or at least remove an obstacle) but assumed would take several more years:  Private insurance is increasingly taking the lead in pushing telemedicine.  I’ve been noting that the reduced cost/better outcome/reduced readmissions scenario HAS to eventually turn private insurance into champions of telemedicine.  Amongst the names he mentioned were Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, WellPoint, and others.

iPods and Raising Telemedicine Adoption

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or

What about the Doctors?

telemediPod 2000 try it bdr

The seeds of this article began when my CEO forwarded a Gartner case study from 2008[1]with the question, “If a hospital could do 345,000 video visits up to 2007, why hasn’t telemedicine expanded more?  Is the issue technological, cultural, managerial, or..?”

Fantastic question.  The issue definitely isn’t technological–at least from a capabilities standpoint.  It may be from a design standpoint…but more on that later.  I’d argue that it is indeed cultural and managerial, although some of that culture and management reflects back on us, the telemedicine solution providers.

We are presented with a quandary: 1) Where telemedicine has been systematically implemented, it has radically improved patient care, lowered costs, improved doctor/staff morale, and even increased revenue…even in the face of lingering payor reimbursement questions currently being worked out by insurers and state legislatures, and yet… 2) Adoption by both individual healthcare providers and organizations has been, well, lackluster, and often outright resisted.

The gap is caused because Read more

Telemedicine Reimbursement vs. Decreased Readmissions

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readmission

The question of reimbursement is very, very important. But not as important as you might think.  As promised a couple weeks ago, we want to look more in depth at the third of our takeaways from the 2014 American Telehealth Conference…especially in light of new developments that have popped up in the news since then.

First, to  bring new readers up  …read more…

Past the Tipping Point

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tipping point

Last Thursday I promised to discuss our takeaways from the ATA conference individually in more detail, starting with

#1 We’re past the tipping point.

I won’t belabor the point of the overall importance of this takeaway, as you can read about it here.  However, I will re-quote ATA CEO Jonathan Linkous because his numbers make a good launching point: “Today, 20 million Americans get some part of their healthcare remotely, and that number will grow as telemedicine expands its reach.”  And the ATA President, Edward Brown, believes that mHealth/Telemedicine will grow by 50% every year.

According to a study by IHS Technology and published in January, the almost 350,000 telehealth patients in 2013 will swell to Read more

Telepsychiatry Cuts Hospital Admissions and Saves Money

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I TOLD YOU SO!

veamea_telepsychiatry-resized-600

Almost 4 months ago, I wrote that TelePsychiatry is the Killer App for Video Conferencing.  It may put a kink in Lucy’s walk-in practice, but the benefits to the rest of society are clear.  (And if Lucy would like to Expand Her Presence, there is a place she can go)

Who should come along to back me up, but the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).  Their July 2011 issue of ACEP News includes an article titled “ED Telepsychiatry Cuts Admissions, Saves Money.”

The article tells the story of implementations in South Carolina and includes a commentary by the vice chair for Emergency Medicine at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pennsylvania where a telepsychiatry program is also in place.

The following data are from the South Carolina study:

  • Admission rates (33% lower)
  • Length of Emergency Department stays (25% shorter)
  • Outpatient follow-up rates (nearly 4x higher)
  • Cost (29% lower for Medicaid patients, 38% lower for private insurance)
  • Patient satisfaction: 80%
  • Physician Satisfaction: 90%
  • Physicians who believe they are more productive using telepsychiatry: 75%

Per the study, “the patient receives a higher quality of care, and the hospitals have reduced costs.”

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