Telehealth
Maine healthcare providers launched their first official telehealth summit on Tuesday with a message to the rest of the country: The first state to see the sun rise each day also aims to be one of the leaders in this rapidly growing healthcare delivery model.
Today some ambulances come equipped with telecommunciations technology that allows in-transport contact with physicians. But even the minutes between when a patient is loaded into the ambulance, or out and into a care setting, can leave room for miscommunications, according to one expert.
Rural hospitals across the country will benefit from a new $400 million-per-year program, developed by the Federal Communications Commission, to provide affordable broadband in medically underserved communities.
The technology underlying the electronic health record and the electronic medical record seems to be significantly driven by sales to a perceived market.
"Any time a business decision is client-driven, it's much more likely to be successful," says Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman.
Although nearly half of all Americans are ready to toss the paper and believe electronic health records will enable more efficient healthcare, they are largely in the dark about what it actually means for them as a patient, says a new survey.
A recent study finds that remote online visits with dermatologists achieved equivalent clinical outcomes for acne patients.
The benefits of the National Demonstration Project on the patient-centered medical home, an initiative by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and its subsidiary TransforMED, are still being realized two years after the project ended.
Recent surveys show patients want to be able to e-mail their doctors, but this type of communication is largely "still in the waiting room," even when the technology to make it happen exists.
“You can’t find a provider that doesn’t want more patients paying in cash,” says the president of a new Web site that aims not only to link cash-paying patients to providers, but also to offer patients greater transparency for making a decision about where to seek medical care.