Telemedicine could help cut rural outmigration, Minn. health-care policy advocate says

Telemedicine should be looked at not only as a means of improving rural health care, but also as a strategy to combat migration from rural areas, writes a Minnesota health-care policy advocate. European research into telemedicine found the service reduced costs by decreasing patient travel and hospital admissions and "included access to greater personnel resources, greater patient access to specialist care, quality of treatment, and more readily available information," writes Nina Slupphaug, a health care policy associate at the progressive think tank Minnesota 2020, writes for the Minnesota Post.

Researchers in Denmark found that "when paired with the positive attitude toward possible eHealth solutions...it probable that eHealth can, to an extent, counteract out-migration," Slupphaug writes. Out-migration decreased as rural health-care jobs were able to offer more professional support and prestige. Telemedicine in the U.S. is most commonly used for "electronic communication between hospitals, between hospitals and primary care centers, between different levels of care, and between general practitioners and specialists," Slupphaug reports.

"Photography for potential blood clots in the eye for diabetes patients, video conference for locally executed kidney dialysis, use of digitally sent images of skin disease, and home-based self-management for patients with diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are all methods of telemedicine that have been successfully implemented in rural parts of Norway," Slupphaug writes. "It is likely that similar implementations in rural Minnesota will be beneficial as well." (Read more)