Hospitals

Morning Read: Is telehealth’s time finally here?

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare: Is telehealth’s time […]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:

Is telehealth’s time finally here? Like many emerging technologies, it seems like we’ve been hearing about the promise of telehealth (or if you prefer telemedicine) for years and haven’t seen much to justify the hype. But several factors appear to be coming together to accelerate the rise of telehealth, which is loosely defined as the delivery of medical services via telecommunications such as video conferencing and web chats. Those factors driving telehealth include billions of federal funding flowing to health IT over the next few years, the increasing popularity of mobile communications devices like the iPhone and the well-noted primary care and nursing shortages that are likely to get worse before they get better.

Information Week lists several promising telehealth projects that could lead to more widespread use of the technology. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, for example, provides video to link patients in ambulances with remote medical specialists. The reason: In pediatrics, especially cases involving critically ill children, care often needs to be delivered while the patient is being moved from one facility to another. At University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, stroke specialists provide guidance to ER doctors at 15 hospitals that don’t have their own stroke specialists or neurologists available. The remote specialists use videoconferencing software to observe, talk to, and examine suspected stroke patients in the other hospitals’ ERs, plus view patients’ CAT scans and electronically pull up other test data.

A key in the adoption of telehealth in non-emergency settings revolves around insurance reimbursement for telehealth services. As more data comes to light showing that telehealth can cut costs while maintaining a high quality of care, insurers will likely embrace the new medium.

Faith vs. medicine: About 20 percent of family doctors who work at religiously affiliated hospitals report experiencing conflicts over faith-based patient care policies. Those are the findings of a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Most of the conflicted doctors work at Catholic hospitals, which account for 12.5 percent of all U.S. community-based hospitals and 15.5 percent of hospital admissions, American Medical News reports. Catholic hospitals are required to follow religious directives on medical care that bar contraception, abortion and sterilization and, in many instances, rule out ending artificial hydration and nutrition.

The vast majority of the time when conflicts arose (86 percent), physicians said they’d encourage patients to seek the recommended care at another hospital. But four percent of doctors said they endorsed violating the hospital’s policy to provide the care. The study highlights an often-overlooked aspect of faith vs. medicine, according to the director of a group that opposes health care organization mergers between Catholic and nonsectarian hospitals that result in reduced access to reproductive care services. “What we haven’t seen given proper attention is the ethical dilemma facing physicians who want to provide services because their patients need the services but who are unable to do so because of institutional religious restrictions,” she said.

FDA investigating prostate-cancer drugs: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is conducting a safety review of a number of prominent hormone-therapy prostate-cancer drugs, including Abbott Laboratories’ Lupron, AstraZeneca’s Zoladex and Sanofi Aventis’ Eligard. The agency cited six studies that indicate “small increased risk of diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease in patients” who’ve used the drugs. The FDA was quick to say that a cause-effect relationship between the drugs and cardiovascular disease hasn’t been shown, so it hasn’t reached any conclusions. The investigation follows a warning from a number of groups, including the American Heart Association, that hormone therapy might increase the risk of heart problems after a group of doctors from the organizations reviewed similar published data.

Controversy in Boston: Noted blogger and CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Paul Levy could be watching his tenure come to an end. After an inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate has come to light, Levy has been fined $50,000 by the hospital’s board of directors. But one high-ranking hospital source told Boston news station WCVB that Levy’s penalties shouldn’t end there: “There are members of the board of directors and the board of trustees, who, having had a day to digest this story, feel the right thing for Paul to do, in the best interest of the Beth Israel Community, would be for him to resign,” the source said. However, based on a statement on his blog, it seems Levy has no intention of stepping down. Plus the hospital’s board is publicly backing Levy (at least when its members aren’t making anonymous comments to news outlets), so it appears that he has a strong chance of surviving the storm.

Photo from flickr user Sarah M Stewart

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