According to an article by Mike Shields for the Kansas Health Institute, some small rural Kansas hospitals are using highly sophisticated medical robots to help ease the shortage of specialists in their areas and in one instance boosting the bottom line at a critical access hospital.
Hamilton County Hospital is a 25 bed critical access hospital located in southwestern Kansas bordering Colorado with a population of about 2,700 people. The nearest major regional medical centers are in Denver and Wichita.
“The hospital was faced with very difficult financial and staffing problems but the use of robots was a key factor in the facility’s ability to turnaround”, according to Chief Executive Bryan Coffey. A few years ago, a telemedicine robot made by California-based InTouch Health was brought into the hospital which resulted in a 40 percent increase in patient volume consistently over the months and 15 percent in growth.
The robot connects distant doctors with patients and local medical providers in real-time via a high definition mobile visual display that includes various monitoring and imaging attachments. Coffey reports, “That even with many of the hospital’s patients on Medicare, the hospital is able to beam in big city care to a rural healthcare environment while saving the federal government money and at the same time lowering overall healthcare costs.
The white paper “Affording the Robot: How Can You Not Afford It” written by Coffey explains how the robot is being used in the ER as well as the clinic. The hospital is looking to use the robot to help with stroke/neurology in the ER, for critical care and services, for dermatology and pediatrics, plus the hospital is looking to offer some OB services to patients in their first trimester.
Coffey’s white paper discusses how financing telemedicine is pretty forward for a critical access hospital as they provide cost-based reimbursement for Medicare. The hospital uses the telemedicine robot in the ER as well as in their rural health clinic which also provides cost-based reimbursement for Medicare patients.
According to Coffey, “The robot opens up opportunities for clinical affiliations which has increased interest from mid-level providers as well as some second and third year residents in medical schools. We have gone from a hospital that was looking to close its doors in early 2013 to a vibrant growing and profitable hospital in 2014. So if someone is questioning how to afford the robot, the issue really is how can you not afford to use a robot?”
Also, Stormont-Vail HealthCare in Topeka placed an InTouch robot at Sabetha Community Hospital which is in Northeast Kansas near the Nebraska line. The Sabetha Hospital and Stormont are part of the Health Innovations Network in Kansas that includes 19 primarily small and rural facilities.
The robot at the Sabetha Hospital is part of a pilot project, according to Carol Wheeler, Stormont’s VP of Regional Relations. “The robot started out doing consultations in the emergency room. However, that was fairly quickly expanded to include inpatient consults as well. Hospitalists through their control stations are able to call up Sabetha and have a visualization of the patient at the bedside and then talk with the local physician, nurse, and patient if necessary.
Wheeler reports, “The robot so far hasn’t been used as frequently as had been hoped but that Sabetha’s hospital staff are interested in expanding its use to include consultations with Stormont’s specialists.”
In other areas, Children’s Mercy is using robots at regional clinics in Wichita, St. Joseph, and Joplin Missouri to provide specialty and sub-specialty pediatric care. “They now link in real-time to a few other hospitals in Kansas and Missouri”, said Morgan Waller, a registered nurse who is Director of Telemedicine Operations and Professional services at Children’s Mercy.
Go to www.khi.org/news/documents/2014/05/30/Hamilton_County_Affording_the_Robot.pdf to read the white paper written by Bryan Coffey.