West Virginia University (WVU) https://wvumedicine.org researcher Scott Findley MD Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine and Director of the Rural Emergency Medical Institute received a $1.2 million grant from HRSA https://www.hrsa.gov within HHS, to bring telehealth capabilities to rural emergency departments across West Virginia.
According to Dr. Findley, “While rural communities can access subspecialty care through outreach clinics and scheduled appointments, this does not solve the problem of the lack of specialty care in the acute setting,”
“Today, rural ERs have trouble recruiting specialists since the low patient count does not justify the expense of keeping a specialist on staff 24/7. Also, specialists may worry that their skills will atrophy in the ER”, said Dr. Amelia Adcock, a member of the research team directing WVU’s Center for Teleneurology and Telestroke https://wvumedicine.org/mi/stroke.
Over the next four years, Dr. Adcock and Dr. Findley plus the team, will establish channels of communication between WVU Medicine’s specialists in Morgantown with a population of 30,955 and ER physicians in Buckhannon, Gassaway, Ripley, and Summersville where populations range from 859 to 5,493. The specialists include neurologists, psychiatrists, and case managers.
The researchers will partner with Allm USA Inc. https://allm.net.en, a technology company that makes medical communications platforms to customize an app which can make triaging patients easier. Dr. Adcock reports that the app is a very important tool to use to decide the baseline of a patient. If the baseline is too low, they are not going to be a good candidate for endovascular therapy.
The app also makes it possible for ER physicians to share their patients’ medical records including MRIs and CT scans with specialists over the phone while complying with medical privacy laws. Plus, physicians can also text or video chat securely without leaving the app.
Incorporating behavioral medicine into telehealth services, can be important for ED physicians to use when they treat patients with Substance Use Disorders. Substance related overdoses have been rising since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
To determine the telehealth program’s success, the research team will consider several outcomes, such as the frequency of patient transfers between hospitals, length of hospital stays, and the number of times patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days after being discharged.
Also, in 2020, WVU’s Stroke Center began providing telestroke services to patients at the Weirton Medical Center where neurologists can now securely view and interact with patients over an encrypted internet connection.
WVU’s Stroke Center team is now able to interact with patients at the Weirton Medical Center’s ER https://www.weirtonmedical.com using video conferencing devices to develop a care plan for stoke patients, share tests like computed tomography scans, and if needed, administer a clot busting drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) intravenously.