All Entries Tagged With: "virtual doctors"
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Twitter is a Web site that allows users to send 140 character updates to others in real time. Individual posts on the Web site are nicknamed Tweets. As some of you know, several hospitals have made headlines this year by Twittering during live surgical procedures. For more information about this phenomenon, check out “Get to know today’s social media Web sites: Know the difference between Twitter and a tweet before drafting your organization’s policy,” in the July issue of Credentialing and Peer Review Legal Insider, archived on www.HCPro.com.
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Solution to the physician shortage – the virtual doctor
Many hospitals are looking for alternative means to provide inpatient services when clinicians are not available. For example, several facilities that have solved the problem of limited access to neurologists through the use of “virtual doctor” robots to assess stroke patients. Treatment for stroke is considered a medical emergency and requires rapid initial evaluation and prompt patient care plans. Through the use of telemedicine, physicians can conduct consultations over the Internet. Using bedside video-conferencing, physicians receive information from telemedicine medical teams in hospital emergency centers. This consultative approach provides prompt access to specialists and eliminates the need for patient transfer while providing competent clinical care (diagnosis and treatment) quickly.
Another innovative use of technology allows intensive care physicians to remotely monitor patients in a multitude of intensive care units. According to a company called VISICU, Inc. “almost 5 million patients are admitted to ICUs each year in the US and more than 500,000 of these patients die. Studies reveal that at least one in ten patients who die in ICUs every day would survive if dedicated intensivists were present in the ICU and managing their care.” Through the use of cameras, microphones, and high-speed computer data lines, access to this specialty care is available 24/7.
Use of this technology sounds like a very appropriate solution to physician shortages.
Carole La Pine, MSA, CPMSM, CPCS