The University of Virginia Center for Telehealth www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/pub/ofice-of-telemedicine/center-for-telehealth.html received the 2014 Governor’s Technology Award for making it easier to access high quality care and health education for patients across the Commonwealth.
The Center was honored in the “IT as Efficiency Driver–Government to Citizen” category for using technology to make it easier for Virginia residents to have better access to government services.
“Though our secure telemedicine network and partnerships with care providers across the Commonwealth, we have been able to save lives, reduce unnecessary travel for medical care, and bring high-quality specialty care closer to where our patients live,” said Karen Rheuban, MD Director of the UVA Center for Telehealth.
Since its founding in 1996, the Center has established 128 telemedicine sites across Virginia and supported more than 40,000 patient encounters in every region of Virginia in more than 45 medical subspecialties.
“As the technology has improved over the past 20 years, telemedicine has become an increasingly valuable tool to provide cost effective, high quality care while taking better advantage of the skills of our specialists at UVA”, said David C. Gordon, Director of UVA’s Office of Telemedicine.
Examples of how the Center for Telehealth has benefited both patients and residents:
- Travel time for Virginia residents seeking medical care has been reduced by more than 14 million miles
- A high risk obstetrics program is provided to care for pregnant women who are at higher risk for delivering their babies early. Neonatal intensive care unit days were reduced by 39 percent for babies born to women who participated in the telemedicine program
- The program has screened more than 2,100 patients with diabetes for diabetic retinopathy with 44 percent of the screened patients identified as being at risk for blindness or for other eye abnormalities requiring further evaluation.
- Enabled more than 2,000 Virginians to participate at 45 different locations in diabetes education programs
- Trained 280 licensed health professionals as certified telehealth technologists to prepare them for jobs in the telehealth field