Future Healthcare Today cultivates the latest news and trends in the health IT industry, with a particular focus on health it. This week looks at how telemedicine can give providers what they need to better serve the patient, health it for psychiatric care of the elderly and trends in Board Guidelines.
All of this and more is in this latest health it roundup:
Telemedicine Innovations That Support the Clinician
Continued health IT innovations can strengthen the services provided by a patient’s care team. Doug Dietzman, executive director of health information exchange for Great Lakes Health Connect in Michigan advocates for vendors to provide solutions that give the provider what they to better serve the patient. He says, “The technology is as patient-centered as the clinician. When vendors properly support providers, providers can properly care for patients.”
Read more here.
Telemedicine and Push Communications
Telecommunications initiatives are being implemented with handset and tablet communications for all patients and clinicians. In a study on Push Telecommunications for Tele-Medicine (PTT) by WinterGreen Research, researchers found that, “advances in push systems inside telemedicine systems and m-health apps are moving patient and clinician communication in a secure manner to and from the person or clinician that needs the healthcare information,” among other findings.
PTT and m-health supports custom messaging from patients on a daily basis. The systems rely on content programs that are tailored to patient conditions and involve questionnaires tailored to the chronic condition in the case of patients with those types of disease conditions. With chronic disease telemedicine systems, content is pushed out to the patient on a custom basis, addressing changes in patient condition.
Read more here.
Telemedicine and Psychiatric Care for Elderly Veterans
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 10 percent of the U.S. population will experience clinical depression in their lifetimes. Dr. Leonard Egede, the Allen H. Johnson Endowed Chair and professor of medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston writes, “Among people over age 65, another 20 percent have “substantial” depression symptoms that may not meet diagnostic criteria for the full disorder.”
Dr. Egede and his colleagues published their study of elderly veterans in The Lancet Psychiatry and concluded talk therapy delivered by two-way video call helped older veterans with depression as much as in-person therapy sessions. Specifically the study found that, “Psychotherapy works for depression whether you deliver it by face-to-face or the telemedicine approach,” and telemedicine is a good option for “older adults who have barriers to mobility, stigma or geographic isolation.”
Read more here.
Progress for Telehealth with Medical Boards
The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) monitors state progress on changes to Medical Board guidelines regarding current policies for health it and patient-physician relationship, and recently submitted comments to the Arkansas State Medical Board requesting they remove unwanted barriers. ATA wrote, “Arkansas ranks 49th as one of the least healthy states in the nation yet also has the most restrictive policies preventing patients from accessing medically necessary services.”
However, progress is being made, and the interstate compact proposed last May by the Federation of State Medical Boards continues to build momentum as more than a fifth of states have now adopted it.
Mississippi’s Medical Board shelved a rule that would have put strict limits on telemedicine usage while Colorado’s state medical board updated draft guidelines that will determine what doctors are and aren’t allowed to do via telemedicine. Also reported, the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine enacted new guidelines that are considered flexible and forward-thinking to protect patient safety while allowing for health innovation.
Read more here.
