Telehealth is a way of delivering healthcare that allows us to provide patients in rural and underserved areas with quality care and easy access to healthcare services. Through our new telehealth services program, our mission is to:
- Improve access to specialty care, locally, throughout Western North Carolina;
- Improve quality of care available to the people of Western North Carolina; and
- Decrease unnecessary patient transfers and/or hospital admissions.
What is Telehealth?
Over distance, telehealth services connect healthcare providers and patients via live, two-way audio/video conferencing. It also:
- Increases timely access to healthcare;
- Eliminates transportation barriers;
- Reduces costs for patients and hospitals; and
- Improves the overall quality of healthcare for its residents.
Telehealth Benefits
Through this advanced technology, patients in more remote areas can now enjoy the same quality health care and benefits of patients in more accessible regions. Some major benefits include:
- Early detection and monitoring.
- Early patient hospital discharge.
- Frequent monitoring of patients who suffer from chronic disease.
- Home telemonitoring and telephone support.
- More control over individual healthcare.
- Better communication among healthcare providers, facilities, insurance companies, patients, and neighboring communities leading to improved patient care quality and outcome.
- Easy access to care from the comfort of patients' homes or local clinic.
Also, telehealth studies have shown that patients who participate in home telehealth used fewer services (i.e., less hospitalization, fewer ER visits, and fewer bed days of care.) These patients also had a greater number of primary care, specialist and home-care visits.
How Does Telehealth Work?
Telehealth combines control station laptops that are used by the physicians at Mission (referred to as hub hospital); and a remote presence endpoint device (RP-7i® Robot) which is placed at the end-user site (referred to as spoke hospital).
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The endpoint device is a mobile, robotic communications platform that gives the hub physician direct control and the ability to virtually navigate any clinical process at the distant hospital. Patients and health care providers may talk privately and physicians may remotely review tests such as CT scans and evaluate laboratory test results.
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The hub physician controls the robot at the remote site, allowing a live patient view to be transmitted. This provides the physician with the ability to focus on specific elements of the examination regarding the stroke or psychiatric evaluation.
There are two main ways this technology works:
Synchronous: This method takes place in real time and involves electronically sharing patient and/or medical information between two locations.
Asynchronous:The "store and forward" method does not require the presence of both parties at the same time. For example: A clinic or primary care practice acquires medical data (i.e., medical images, bio-signals, etc.) and then transmits this data to a doctor or specialist for offline assessment.
Telehealth Services in Western North Carolina
Telehealth services include telestroke and telepsychiatry because smaller hospitals often lack the equipment and specialty-care physicians to effectively and immediately treat stroke and mental health patients. Additionally, financial and transportation barriers often prevent rural residents from receiving life-saving, timely and quality care. These services are available at McDowell Hospital and are as follows:
Telestroke: Mission Hospital has been accredited by the Joint Commission and is a certified primary stroke center. Located in the "Stroke Belt" of the United States, Western North Carolina has a high stroke mortality rate. Economic and geographic barriers as well as physician shortages often prevent rural residents from receiving life-saving, timely and quality care. The Telestroke program provides a timely, accurate diagnosis and opportunity for earlier life-saving recommendations in the patients own community.
Telepsychiatry: Before this service, mental health patients had no access to psychiatrists. As a result, they were left with no alternative other than to visit the emergency department, and to be subsequently placed on a waiting list to a state psychiatric facility, without having had a psychiatric evaluation and or/treatment plan. Not only did this place a burden on the emergency department, it also limited the care access for others. Now, with the telepsychiatry program, mental health patients will be provided access to a timely, accurate diagnosis and proper treatment recommendations.
Contact Us
For more information on Telehealth at Mission Health System or if you are an organization that is interested in presentations or the use of telehealth services please use our online form.
