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Scripps Launches Telemedicine for its Employees

Scripps Health has rolled out a new telemedicine program for its employees, allowing them to consult with doctors remotely using a telehealth program called MDLIVE that could eventually be made available to Scripps patients.

Anil Keswani, corporate vice president of ambulatory care and population health management at Scripps, discussed the health system’s Oct. 1 launch of the program during a recent San Diego Business Journal panel discussion called “Telemedicine: Here, Now and Emerging.”

The general objective behind MDLIVE is to keep productivity up — by enabling employees to speak with doctors via webcam, email or phone instead of in-person, reducing the amount of time spent away from work. This could provide Scripps employees quick remedies for simple ailments like coughs and colds.

Scripps is conducting a soft launch of the program, which has enrolled about 500 of its employees but will eventually extend also to their families, Keswani said.

Scripps is using Sunrise, Fla.-based MDLIVE as a sort of test run, as it searches for a way to extend the telemedicine system to its entire patient network.

Telemedicine uses telecommunication and information technology to provide simple clinical health care at a distance. The general consensus is that telemedicine will be an important addition to the health care system — lessening the burden on physicians by allowing them to make judgment calls through video consultations and other remote patient-monitoring services.

Studies have found that about 80 percent of primary care doctor visits require simple fixes and don’t need in-person consults.

“I think it has a real potential to reduce our emergency department visits,” Keswani said. “We don’t need to see patients if they have a cough or cold; we need to be ready for pneumonias or traumas. Telemedicine could be a way to get us there.”

Remote Psychology ‘an Instant Hit’

Though estimates vary for market size, analysts across the board agree that the telemedicine market is rising rapidly. According to Wellesley, Mass.-based market research firm BCC Research LLC, for instance, the global telemedicine market was about $11.6 billion in 2011 and will increase to $27.3 billion in 2016.

Another recent report, from British market intelligence firm Juniper Research Ltd., found that remote patient monitoring through telehealth could lead to cost savings of $36 billion worldwide.

Keswani spoke on the telemedicine panel along with Eric Rockwell, president of San Diego-based Centrex IT Inc. and Steve Hogle, a telemedicine expert at Cisco Systems Inc.

Centrex specializes in developing information technology systems for outpatient medical groups and biotechnology companies. One of the company’s behavioral health clients has been using telemedicine for psychological consultation for the past three years, Rockwell said. The doctors see patients all around California, particularly in underserved areas, he said.

“It was an instant hit. Doctors would sit in front of a screen on a desk in a small room and have a face-to-face conversation with a patient at the other end,” Rockwell said. “The doctors said they felt they were talking to a real person in the room.”

This sort of constant contact and in-person feel is really “upping the ante on bedside manner,” Keswani said. To boot, such consultations across the board could offer lower copays than in-person visits, he said.

Simple But Complex

The information technology infrastructure to support telemedicine is complex but approaching a point where it could be widely deployed, Hogle said.

“Everyone can do it, but telemedicine takes a lot of complexity to do something simple. There’s a lot behind the curtain,” Hogle said.

Cisco has created a telemedicine cart that allows doctors to video chat with patients at point-of-care, providing not only a webcast of the conversation but also access to a patient’s medical records, X-rays and other imaging services, and a display of vital functions. Such a device could be wheeled between patient rooms, enabling a nurse to conduct basic physiological tests while a doctor oversees the procedures remotely.

This could enable an expert in St. Louis, for example, to treat a patient in a San Diego hospital, Hogle said.

“One of the biggest barriers besides the technology is the cultural piece,” Hogle said. “We can span distance and time instantly, but this is a new concept. How do we get people to bite and get doctors on board?”

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