Media
"Telemedicine is another example of the blazing efficiency of the Internet. Telemedicine is transforming the time-eating practice of going to the doctor's office by eliminating the 'going to the office' part." Source: Wyatt Andrews, CBS News
The TeleAtrics Connect™ system has been used successfully by the Health-e-Access Program to provide effective day-to-day health care, connecting schools and childcare centers with pediatric/family medical practices throughout the Rochester, NY area. These virtual visits between health care providers and children in daycare centers and schools are a cost effective alternative to trips to physicians' offices and emergency rooms.The ABC News story below reports that telehealth visits saved parents an average of 4.5 hours of missed work for each virtual visit and decreased children's health-related absences from school by 63%.
Press Releases
Innovative Programs in Telemedicine: The Value of On-Site Healthcare Delivery for Inner-City Children
An article, published in Telemedicine and e-Health, Vol. 15, No.7 in September, 2009, profiles the Health-e-Access telemedicine model that allows on-site acute care delivery to childcare centers, schools, or after-hours neighborhood locations by a child's primary care physician. The mission statement of the program is clear: “Healthcare when and where you need it by providers you know and trust.” Its goals are an end to middle-of-the-night visits to the Emergency Department (ED) for minor ailments, less reliance on urgent care centers with treatment provided by the “doctor du jour,” and less missed work and family time for parents when their children do not feel well. Health-e-Access (HeA) is a telemedicine service that provides acute care primarily to inner-city children in Rochester, New York. It has delivered more than 7,000 patient visits in its 8-year history, and its success, in terms of replacing ED visits with telemedicine consults, has been documented in the medical literature.Read the complete article
Telemedicine Can Help Ease ED Overcrowding
This article, published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on June 29, 2009 was written in response to a previous article "Fixing Code Red" (6/28/09) that discussed the issue of overcrowding in emergency rooms. Rochester General, Strong Memorial, Unity and Highland hospitals in Monroe County, NY, combined have seen a 12 percent increase in emergency room visits over the past five years. The authors contend that although no single initiative will solve this crisis, telemedicine offers a fundamental fix. Telemedicine removes many of the barriers of time and space imposed by the usual healthcare encounter. Read the full article.
Telemedicine Could Eradicate Many Expensive ED Visits
A community-wide study in upstate New York found that nearly 28 percent of all visits to the pediatric emergency department could have been replaced with a more cost-effective Internet doctor’s “visit,” or telemedicine, according to investigators from the University of Rochester Medical Center. The Rochester team will present these findings and more at this week’s Pediatric Academic Society Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. “We learned that more than one in four local patients are using the pediatric emergency department for non-emergencies,” said Kenneth McConnochie, M.D., M.P.H., the study’s lead investigator and a professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester’s Golisano Children’s Hospital at Strong. “This mismatch of needs and resources is inefficient, costly and impersonal for everyone involved. Read more>
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