The House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology under the chairmanship of Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) conducted a hearing on July 31 to examine the overall state of telemedicine and the challenges affecting rural areas and small medical practices.
Dr. Karen Rheuban, Senior Associate Dean for CME and External Affairs, and Director at the University of Virginia (UVA) Center for Telehealth appearing before the Committee said, “Telehealth is an essential tool to provide for high quality care for both acute and chronic disease management, to mitigate workforce shortages, to improve population health, and to lower the cost of care.”
She added, “Telehealth holds great promise, but the administrative and regulatory challenges can be overwhelming. Therefore, it is imperative that we create and promulgate policies that foster certainty, transparency, high quality, secure, and sustainable solutions to empower patients, providers, and payers to adopt 21st Century models of care.”
In addition, “There are many opportunities for small practices to integrate telehealth models into everyday practices but small group practices and solo practitioners may find that the numerous obstacles they face can create significant challenges.”
Since the establishment of the program in the 1990s, collaborations and agreements have developed that now connect the UVA Health System with 128 sites across the Commonwealth using high definition video teleconferencing, store and forward technologies, remote patient monitoring, and mobile health applications.
UVA connects with hospitals, clinics, health centers, community service boards, medical practices, correctional facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and emergency medical services. So far, the telemedicine program has reduced the burden of travel for Virginians by more than nine million miles.
In addition, the Center has worked closely with all the relevant agencies in the Commonwealth to help build a telemedicine network, pilot innovative applications, ensure sustainability through sound state public policy collaborations, and has worked to integrate telehealth into mainstream healthcare.
Today, more than 90 percent of patients seen through the UVA Telemedicine Program are able to remain within their community and receive care using telemedicine technologies.
Some of the UVA telemedicine projects include:
- A high-risk obstetrics telemedicine project was conducted. Traditional face-to-face care was compared with care provided via telemedicine for 374 high-risk pregnant women resulting in fewer NICU hospitals days
- UVA in partnership with BroadAxe Care Coordination developed remote patient monitoring tools to prevent hospital readmissions. This project has been shown to be effective for patients with heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, COPD, pneumonia, and has reduced 30 day readmissions by 45 percent
- Store and forward ophthalmologic screening is used for all retinopathy to help underserved adults with diabetes. Over two years 1736 screens have been performed with 802 abnormal patients identified as being at risk for blindness
- Remote patient monitoring tools used to reduce the burden of diabetes in the community setting with impressive reductions. All clinical metrics tracked have had impressive reductions in the range or 9-10 percent
Go to http://smallbusiness.house.gov/uploadedfiles/7-31-2014_rheuban_testimony_final.pdf to view the testimony.