There are a flurry of stories lately about telemedicine and they are not just in health care publications. Whether it is the New York Times or Forbes or other major outlets, telemedicine is being talked about and here’s why:
The potential to save money
As Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in both public and private sectors start moving from a Fee-for-Service (FFS) model to outcomes-based models, telemedicine provides the preventative potential to diagnose and monitor serious conditions, and ultimately reduce the need for costly treatments and expensive hospital stays.
Technology advances and adoption
High pixel cameras and face-to-face conferencing used to be the purview of wealthy individuals and large corporations. Today, smart phones provide these tools to a wide portion of the population. For younger patients in particular, the idea of “face-timing” a doctor about a rash or for a follow-up visit is a natural evolution in health care that builds on an existing dependence on smart phones to run both their personal and professional life.
The dwindling pool of physicians
As baby boomer doctors retire without a balancing number of medical students to replace them, there is a serious physician shortage looming. Telemedicine extends the ability of doctors and mid-level providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants to efficiently see more patients. This is especially important in light of the aging baby boomer population reaching its retirement years and likely to need more care and treatment.
The potential to help underserved areas get better care
The roots of telemedicine can be found in serving rural outposts that do not have the same access to specialists as major medical centers. For example, telemedicine provides a way to get second opinions from specialist pathologists. Errors in diagnoses have a high cost to both the patient and to the health care providers. Getting the diagnosis wrong for serious conditions like cancer can keep patients from getting the best treatment protocol for their condition or expose them to unnecessary procedures and medicines.
Workable models already being used
So much of telemedicine seems sci-fi and hypothetical to the general population, but there are many examples of successful telemedicine initiatives in action. In his article about trends in telemedicine for 2014, Charles Linkous, Chief Executive Officer of the American Telemedicine Association, noted the use of a tele-stroke robot by Mayo Clinic. The tele-stroke robot allows a Mayo clinic specialist to examine a patient who has suffered a stroke at a remote facility. Getting a patient quickly in front of a specialist is showing significant savings in treatment and after-care, i.e. caregiver and rehabilitation time.
There are already billions of dollars in public and private grants available to fund telemedicine “hub and spoke” alliances between major hospitals and small outlying health care facilities, like the one just described.
The Tipping Point
Forbes quotes recent research by industry analysts predicting that telemedicine is poised to explode from a $240 million industry today to $1.9 billion in 2018 – that’s an annual growth rate of 56 percent. This makes investors in all areas of telemedicine sit up and take notice.
One area to watch in telemedicine is Patient Health Information (PHI) security. How can health care providers protect personal health data that is being wirelessly transmitted? For example, using telemedicine to monitor blood sugar for diabetics can send up early warning signals that might otherwise be missed. But where and how is that information stored and secured? With the large Electronic Health Records (EHR) breaches over the past several years, this remains a significant area to address for health care facilities.
Telemedicine appears to be on the verge of becoming a key component of health care delivery, particularly to underserved populations and in the area of diagnosis. This is an exciting step forward that health care providers will need to prepare for by ensuring that their IT infrastructure and security plan can protect PHI.
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