Navy Medicine East (NME) and Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) are using telemedicine technology as a key component for their new consult service “Health Experts onLine at Portsmouth” or called HELP. Providers seeking answers from specialists can be independent duty corpsmen on small ships, medical officers on carriers, doctors at military hospitals, and clinics without local access to specific specialties.
The HELP system will be used by healthcare providers in all branches of the armed forces who are in NME’s area of responsibility since NMCP is the flagship medical center. Consults are conducted in this huge region which goes from Texas to Bahrain, spans 10 time zones, and makes real-time teleconsultations impractical.
By using HELP, healthcare providers can have access to specialists at NMCP when they need to consult about a difficult medical case that is not an emergency. The goal for using this consult system is to reduce unnecessary medical evacuations from ships at sea and overseas as well as to reduce patient referrals to the civilian healthcare network.
“The system allows input for the medical history and physical symptoms of the patient, their medications, and any questions,” said Cmdr. Andrew Lin, one of HELP’s Consult Managers. “Providers can also upload media files, like pictures, X-rays, or sound files.
Once the consult is added to the system, the data then goes to the consult manager at NMCP who decides which specialist needs to receive the question and the specialist will then provide an answer.
According to HELP policy, specialists at NMCP must answer a consult within 72 hours after receiving the question. However response time is expected to be quicker probably around 14 hours.
HELP uses the same technology as the “Pacific Asynchronous Telehealth” (PATH) which was developed by the Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. PATH processes more than 3,000 cases a year from 20 hospitals and clinics throughout the Pacific region involving 40 different medical and surgical specialties, and is able to save up to $750,000 annually in medevac costs. HELP is expected to give military treatment facilities similar cost reductions.
HELP offers additional benefits such as completed consults can be added to the patient’s medical record, NMCP can track specialty workload to ensure that the staff is available for all patients, and NMCP can analyze the nature of the consults to identify opportunities to provide additional training to the providers who submit consults.