Emergency patients in rural hospitals that use telemedicine have shorter wait times than in those that don't have such technology, according to a study from the University of Iowa. Patients wait an average of six minutes less to see a live clinician; if the first clinical assessment is done via telemedicine, 42 percent of the patients in the study saw wait times nearly 15 minutes shorter. And patients who needed to be sent to other hospitals were able to get transferred more quickly because they were assessed more quickly and by more qualified specialists via telemedicine at the first hospital, John Commins reports for HealthLeadersMedia.
The study's lead author, Nicholas Mohr, an emergency physician and associate professor at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, said the minutes saved could be the difference between life and death for a rural patient with a serious health problem: "Especially in remote hospitals, that 15 minutes saved could change outcomes for patients with particular conditions that we would expect would be most sensitive to that, such as severe trauma, stroke, myocardial infarction." Mohr is also a researcher with the university's Rural Telehealth Research Center.
The study showed that telemedicine is a valuable tool for the small number of cases that rural hospitals can't effectively assess and treat on their own. "The consultation rate was about 3.5 percent, meaning that if 30 people walked into a rural emergency department, 29 were going to be treated without ever consulting the TM provider," Mohr told Commins. "But, that 30th person is the one that the local clinician pushes the button and asks for help."
The study looked at data from 2,857 emergency department cases in 14 hospitals in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota that use telemedicine services from Avera eCARE Services, an emergency department telemedicine provider based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The telemedicine cases were matched with non-telemedicine control cases.
Telemedicine is becoming increasingly popular with rural hospitals, Mohr notes, as broadband access to rural areas improves. In North Dakota, 80 percent of critical access hospitals use telemedicine. "Mohr says that telemedicine is not the silver bullet that will remove obstacles to healthcare access in rural America, but he sees it as part of the solution," Commins reports.
The study's lead author, Nicholas Mohr, an emergency physician and associate professor at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, said the minutes saved could be the difference between life and death for a rural patient with a serious health problem: "Especially in remote hospitals, that 15 minutes saved could change outcomes for patients with particular conditions that we would expect would be most sensitive to that, such as severe trauma, stroke, myocardial infarction." Mohr is also a researcher with the university's Rural Telehealth Research Center.
The study showed that telemedicine is a valuable tool for the small number of cases that rural hospitals can't effectively assess and treat on their own. "The consultation rate was about 3.5 percent, meaning that if 30 people walked into a rural emergency department, 29 were going to be treated without ever consulting the TM provider," Mohr told Commins. "But, that 30th person is the one that the local clinician pushes the button and asks for help."
The study looked at data from 2,857 emergency department cases in 14 hospitals in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota that use telemedicine services from Avera eCARE Services, an emergency department telemedicine provider based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The telemedicine cases were matched with non-telemedicine control cases.
Telemedicine is becoming increasingly popular with rural hospitals, Mohr notes, as broadband access to rural areas improves. In North Dakota, 80 percent of critical access hospitals use telemedicine. "Mohr says that telemedicine is not the silver bullet that will remove obstacles to healthcare access in rural America, but he sees it as part of the solution," Commins reports.
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