St. Joseph's Hospital/Foyer D'Youville went live with telehealth services — a two-way video-conferencing — on Monday.
"At the moment, it's mostly educational services for staff, but we plan on having public sessions down the road and physician referrals will happen in the future," said John Kelly, the hospital's CEO. "It depends on how the province moves the capacity of the system."
One of the biggest advantages of telehealth for rural residents is reducing the time it will take for them to consult a specialist in major centres, such as Regina or Saskatoon.
Taking into account the two-hour drive from Gravelbourg to Regina, the wait to see a specialist, the consult with the physician and then the drive back, patients often spend an entire day for a 15-minute appointment, Kelly said.
On Monday, Gravelbourg staff attended a telehealth session about high blood pressure.
"The presenter from today's session was in Edmonton and there were sites from all over Saskatchewan and Alberta connected to this site by video-conference," said Lisa Taylor, regional telehealth consultant.
However, the primary focus of telehealth is patient care.
"We'll start off in Gravelbourg with educational sessions and then as we get people more comfortable with the technology and more people find out about it, we'll move more towards patients being able to see physicians by telehealth," Taylor said.
She works out of the Moose Jaw Union Hospital, which has a telehealth suite that is used regularly for children and their parents to meet with a surgeon and talk about an upcoming operation.
"They go to Saskatoon and have the procedure and then a few weeks later they come back and they're seen by the physician again to follow-up on the surgery and that's done by telehealth," Taylor said.
A special hand-held camera provides high resolution images of patients' surgical wounds.
Telehealth sites are set up in all of the province's health regions.
"It's nothing new to our region, it's just we're expanding what we've already had in our region to include Gravelbourg," Taylor said.
Providence Place in Moose Jaw is also ready to join the telehealth sites that are already in place at Moose Jaw Union Hospital and Assiniboia Union Hospital.
"The technology is revolutionary," Taylor said. "It gives our patients in the rural areas who have to travel such distances easy access to the resources that telehealth can provide."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pamela Cowan
Quelle/Source: The Regina Leader-Post, 20.04.2010
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