Telemedicine Helps Decrease Costs

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/telemedicine-cost-effective-future-medicine

Although this article doesn’t pertain exactly to St Lawrence county, it discusses some technologies that would prove beneficial to rural areas. There is a large population of people living in St Lawrence county that have a low economic income and so some of the costs that come with critical medical procedures can have a negative impact on either the decision to receive treatment or the lifestyle following the procedure to pay off the bills.  This article discusses ways to use telemedicine as a cost effective care.

            One initiative is aimed at poison intoxications. They hope to set up a system where all a person would have to do is snap a photo on their smart phone and send it to a specialist to analyze so that when the patient gets to the hospital they have treatment already set up. It would also help the people around the victim to tell them what to do. The faster the medical can treat the victim the less likely there is going to be any longer term damage and thereby shortening the hospital stay.

            The other innovative idea they have come up with is to use a devise that can monitor neonates from the families home. This device allows the baby to be discharged about 1 week earlier and costs about 2000$. “Considering a NICU stay costs about $5,000 per day, the $2,000 telemed system replaces $35,000 in hospital costs, per patient ($5,000 x 7 days).”

            Hospital stays can be quite expensive and especially if one lives in a rural area. Not only are they racking up a large medical bill, they are missing work as well as the family member who is there with the sick person. Anything that helps decrease the hospital time not only saves the patient money but also opens up space for others that need treatment and care. 

Rural Healthcare Teams

           I was having a hard time trying to find an article based around St. Lawrence County. Being from California I found this one but it has a couple of points pertaining healthcare in general in the USA. Lawmakers in California are working on ways to expand the scope of healthcare practitioners so they can better work with one another and fill the lack of providers.

            Now, under President Obama’s healthcare act more people have insurance and therefore the need to have more practitioners is greater than ever. This need combined with the shortage in rural areas have prompted lawmakers to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare. On top of allowing PAs and NPs to treat patients more independently, they are pushing to try and get Pharmacists and optometrists to act as primary care providers. The article quotes and I agree with “Physician assistants, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and optometrists agree that they have more training than they are allowed to use.” By giving the practitioners more scope of practice, they would be able to better serve the community and work with each other to offer more services to the growing need.

            The article quotes an optometrist that complains of frequently seeing people that he knows to have diabetes but by law can’t diagnose them and must refer them elsewhere. It seem like a more beneficial use of the optometrists education would be to also help out these milder forms of diabetes and only refer the more serious cases to the primary care providers. If this idea could be adopted to rural areas, it could help fill the void. Already in a rural county in California, two clinical pharmacists have taken control of the diabetes clinic treating about 500 people. Again if more places would allow its healthcare providers to expand their scope of practice, more patients would be able to be treated.

            This idea would make it so someone doesn’t always have to see a specialist when a disease is minor and thereby freeing up more time for the specialist to see more patients. By allowing more healthcare providers to expand their scope, patients who have a slightly elevated blood pressures or at risk for diabetes would be able to get preventative treatment more readily.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-doctors-20130210,0,1509396