The service uses interactive video conferencing, allowing specialty doctors in other cities to provide face-to-face, confidential exams to patients at Moundview. The TeleHealth Program was made available at Moundview through a partnership with Marshfield Clinic and a grant from the Wisconsin Public Services Commission.
Three nurses at Moundview recently were trained on the use of the TeleHealth equipment by Dr. Nina Antoniotti, director for Marshfield Clinic's TeleHealth Program. The hospital is now scheduling patients for appointments, and the service will be available to hospitalized patients needing specialty care.
"Distance should never be a barrier to high quality specialty care," Antoniotti said. "Patients deserve to receive services close to their home at a time and place that is convenient for them. TeleHealth allows patients, doctors and nurses to talk to each other as if they are in the same room. All the exams, tests and medical information are conducted in real time and are sent to the specialists safely and confidentially though a high-speed telephone line."
"Moundview will use TeleHealth for specialties that we do not currently offer on-site," said Jeremy Normington, chief executive officer at Moundview Memorial. "This includes allergy, bariatric services, dermatology, endocrinology, ENT, behavioral health, neurology, pain management and wound healing. TeleHealth will save area residents time and money by providing the care they need at their local hospital. Patients can ask their primary care practitioner to set up a TeleHealth consult right at Moundview."
The Marshfield Clinic TeleHealth Network began in 1997 with a grant from the Office of Rural Health Policy. In 2000, it received an additional grant from the Office for the Advancement of TeleHealth, Health Resources and Services Administration, to continue to expand its original program and move further into communities that would benefit from TeleHealth services. The program has been very successful at bridging the gap between resources and remote populations' unmet health care needs.
Antoniotti and other Marshfield Clinic personnel worked with Moundview's information technology and facilities staff to bring TeleHealth to the hospital. TeleHealth-trained nurses at Moundview are: Terri Joy Weichert, Crystal Wormet, Linda Charles and Cindy Buchanan. The lead nurse for the program is Weichert who will greet and prepare the TeleHealth patients for their clinical exams.
For more information about TeleHealth and its services, go the Moundview's Web site at www.moundview.org or call Charles, clinic manager at Moundview, 608-339-8301.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Tammy Lowrey
Quelle/Source: Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, 19.02.2010
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