HRSA’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy https://hrsa.gov/rural-health funds the Rural Telehealth Research Center (RTRC) https://www.ruralhealthresearch.org/centers.telehealth to study the evidence base for telehealth especially in rural settings. RTRC is a collaboration of the University of Iowa, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the University of Southern Maine.
RTRC is working on the research project Evaluating the Role of Tele-Emergency Care in Healthcare Costs and Long Term Outcomes for Rural Medicare Beneficiaries with Sepsis. The project being led by Nicholas Mohr, MD, is anticipated to be completed by August 2021.University of Southern Maine.
The solution to caring for rural Medicare beneficiaries with sepsis in rural communities is to enable emergency department-based telemedicine (tele-ED) consultations to exist between a rural provider and a board certified emergency physician to reduce care delays and improve outcomes for sepsis patients while avoiding unnecessary costs.
The researchers will compare patients who are not treated with tele-ED and identify whether and to what degree early treatment with tele-ED would have led to improved outcomes and cost savings.