Experts presented the most up-to-date information on the successful advancement of telehealth, telemedicine, and remote monitoring at the “Telehealth Capitol Connection” briefing held on Capitol Hill June 21st. Neal Neuberger Senior Policy Consultant to the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) www.americantelemed.org welcomed a full room of hill staff professionals and other leaders in the telemedicine and telehealth field to the event.
The briefing moderator Lt. Gen James Peake (Ret), Senior Vice President CGI Federal www.cgi.com, and ATA’s President of the Board of Directors, agrees with the experts that telehealth, and past achievements in the field are rapidly moving the use of technologies in the right direction to achieve more effective healthcare in the military and veteran population.
According to Darrell Owens, National Security Advisor & Military Legislative Assistant, in the Office of Senator Patrick Toomey www.toomey.senate.gov, “Since DOD and the VA are leading in the exploration of telemedicine and other health connected related technologies, other agencies and organizations are looking closely at how these agencies are successfully managing the delivery of healthcare.”
Colleen Rye, Ph.D., Chief Army Telehealth, Office of the Army Surgeon General www.army.mil/armymedicine, and Chair of the Military Health System Telehealth Working Group reports, “The Army is using teleconnections to provide effective healthcare in both Garrison and in the operational environment. In FY 2008-2015, approximately 200,000 telehealth clinical encounters took place in over 30 countries/territories, 18 time zones, and in over 30 clinical specialties.”
Dr Rye reports, “The Army is specifically providing services such as teleradiology, telebehavioral health, working with specialists through Project ECHO, developing EDpilots for acute primary care, utilizing the clinical video teleconferencing model, developing eICU hubs, and conducting telehealth research programs for deployed care.”
The Army’s telehealth expansion is also underway with the Connected Consistent Patient Experience (CCPE) which is creating a care continuum around patients using advanced telehealth modalities.
The Army is also conducting services with Tri-Service participation. This includes establishing virtual patient-centered medical homes and holding weekly global synchronization forums for telehealth via calls in eleven time zones.
Neil C. Evans M.D. Chief Officer, Office of Connected Care, Veterans Health Administration www.va.gov/health (VHA) explained that the VHA’s Connected Care program includes telemedicine, telehealth, virtual care, mHealth, use of patient portals, eHealth, and digital technologies.
Telehealth at the VA involves Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT), Home Telehealth (HT), and Store and Forward Telehealth (SFT). In FY 2015, the VA’s CVT, HT, and SFT programs treated patients at 150 VA Medical Centers and at over 750 Community Based Outpatient Clinics to treat more than 677,000 patients which amounted to more than 2.14 million telehealth episodes of care.
Results show that home telehealth reduced days in bed by 58 percent and reduced hospital admissions by 35 percent. Using clinical video telemental health reduced acute psychiatric bed days of care by 28 percent and SFT reached 298,000 veterans with a patient satisfaction rate of 96 percent.
In total, the number of veterans receiving care via telehealth grew approximately 6 percent in FY 2015 including the 45 percent of these patients living in rural areas many dealing with limited access to VA healthcare.
Dr. Evans discussed the use of Hubs and mentioned that the VA’s Hub “Centralized Genomic Medicine and Counseling Service” started in 2012 now provides direct patient counseling and support to local clinicians at 80 VA Medical Centers.
Also, the VHA’s VISN 10 Tele-ICU Hub programs located in Cincinnati connecting to other facilities plus the VA’s VISN 23 Tele-ICU program centered in Minneapolis connects to other intensive care units in a dozen communities.