Residents on the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland living with diagnosed or suspected cancers that may require advanced lung surgery are now able to meet with leading experts in thoracic surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) www.umm.edu in Baltimore without leaving the Shore.
Video teleconferencing consultations will enable an expanded telemedicine partnership to exist between UMMC and the Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) www.atlanticgeneral.org located in Berlin Maryland.
The University of Maryland Medical System’s academic medical center already provides around-the-clock remote monitoring of ICU patients at AGH as part of the University of Maryland’s eCare network
UMMC thoracic surgeons will use teleconferencing to virtually consult with patients at AGH, review CT scans, and send other tests to see if the patient is a surgical candidate. The entire workup and preoperative consultation is done locally.
Six surgeons in the Division of Thoracic Surgery at UMMC www.umm.edu/programs/thoracic will take part in the program with all of the surgeries to take place at UMMC which is also home to the University of Maryland’s Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is one of NCI’s designated comprehensive cancer centers.
The program will include post-operative and follow-up telemedicine visits as well. UMMC surgeons will also take part in AGH’s local Tumor Board, which is a multidisciplinary team of specialists who meet to discuss their patients’ cancer treatments.
Eventually, patients will be able to receive second opinions as well as treatment planning, via telemedicine from UMMC specialists for a variety of cancer diagnoses. These visits will be conducted in coordination with the medical oncologists at AGH’s new John H. “Jack” Burbage Regional Cancer Care Center which is scheduled to open in the spring of 2018.