By Christine Gannon
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – As the hub of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff’s medical community has been implementing telemedicine practices over the past several years that allow doctors to better serve their patients. Medicine has been merging with technology for more than 40 years, and both of Flagstaff’s largest medical centers now use telemedical tools to make their service of care greater than it has been previously.
“From the research that we’ve done,” said Greg Hales, Program Coordinator for the Telehealth division at North Country Healthcare in Flagstaff, “there aren’t a whole lot of organizations around this country providing primary care via telehealth.”
In fact, Hales said, the United States is drastically behind the rest of the world in providing electronic primary care, even though we are in the lead for other types of telemedical practices.
Telemedicine, which is interchangeable with telehealth, Hales explained, can be separated into two categories: real-time video conferencing and store-and-forward practices.
Real-time conferencing is what it sounds like: a doctor sits at his or her computer with a webcam and the patient sits in an examination room along with a support staff member – generally a nurse – that also has a webcam. Both rooms have screens to allow each party to see the other. In this type of telemedicine the doctor is seeing patients at the time they are in the clinic or hospital, even though the physician may be many miles away, and is able to conduct a normal exam with the help of the support staff.
Store-and-forward type telemedicine is the practice of capturing pictures of the patient, specifically the part of the patient for which he or she is being seen, and sending them to the appropriate physician who looks at them and makes a diagnosis based on the photographs. “[Store-and-forward telemedicine] is about 90 percent of the telemedicine that’s actually done,” said Hales. “And most telemedicine is for the purpose of specialist consultation.”
North Country Healthcare (NCHC), Flagstaff’s largest primary care provider, has deployed the former of the two types of telemedicine within the past six months at each of their 11 satellite sites across Arizona.
Originally they had planned for a telehealth program to help with the administrative duties of keeping the sites in touch and on the same track, as well as providing the medical staff with continuing education. When Dr. Eric Henley became NCHC’s new Medical Director, he decided to also utilize the telemedicine technology to provide services to the satellite sites where physician retention, and making services available to patients, is difficult.
Flagstaff Medical Center (FMC) is Flagstaff’s other largest health provider; its main role is hospital and emergency room. The hospital has been using telemedicine for several years, mainly as a way to get specialist opinions on radiology images.
“FMC is contracted with Northern Arizona Radiology [a local radiology practice] to read and interpret [FMC’s] radiology images,” said John Chadwick, IT consultant for the radiologists.
The teleradiology industry has produced several after-hours teleradiology programs to help medical relationships, such as the one that FMC and NAR have, function even when a radiologist is not right there in the office. Alta Vista Radiology, an after-hours teleradiology reading service, is the program FMC and NAR use, said Chadwick. This program allows the radiologists at NAR to consult on cases and provide second opinions to the doctors at the hospital. This, in turn, helps increase the accuracy of diagnoses and subsequent patient treatments.
Telemedicine holds benefits for both patients and doctors. According to the American Telemedicine Associate (ATA), the top three benefits of telemedicine are improved access, reduced costs and increased patient demand for services. With telemedicine tools, physicians are able to: reach more patients because distance is no longer a factor; lower medical costs, specifically travel costs, for both doctors and patients; and see more patients because of the previous two benefits.
