When a family physician identifies a patient with questionable heart noises, they can refer them to various cardiac-specialists across the province, but they are only counted as a potential market for the new Telehealth program if they are referred to one specific program — the Cardiac EASE program.
"In Edmonton there's multiple different groups of cardiologists," said Josephine Amelio, provincial manager for Clinical Telehealth.
"It's a very convoluted system," she said. "They could be referred to Edmonton but they may not be referred to the Cardiac EASE program."
The new program uses digital stethoscopes and video conferencing to connect patients with cardiac specialists at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute in Edmonton, and has already set up in Drayton Valley, Wetaskiwin, Edson, and High Level.
It reduces the stress of having to go to a big city, and speeds up the process of getting assessed by a heart specialist and treated, said Amelio.
Dr. John O'Conner, a family physician operating out of Fort McKay, said he tried similar technology in 2007 and thought it was incredible.
"We could record with the stethoscope about a minute of the cardiac cycle and send it electronically, immediately, to a cardiologist for his or her opinion," he said. "We could listen very clearly because you heard the heart sounds in stereo," he said. "A deaf man would be able to hear them."
The program will come online in Fort McMurray soon, according to a media release, but the extent of the program depends on how much need the Mazankowski clinic identifies here, and that depends on how many physicians refer patients to the Cardiac EASE program, said Amelio.
"They need to see those referral patterns happening because, from a Fort McMurray perspective, you have the opportunity to refer to wherever you want," she said.
O'Conner said there are two reasons why physicians might not refer patients to the Cardiac EASE program.
They may not know how effective the Telehealth program can be, and they may not know that they have to refer to a specific clinic for their patients to be counted, he said.
O'Conner said he did not know the Mazankowski was measuring the number of patients he referred to the Cardiac EASE program.
"A lot of people have their own favourite cardiologist, but in this day and age, with the numbers of people and the wait times, this sort of setup is way better at insuring there's a triage and then a distribution of these names to the various cardiologists," said O'Conner.
Amelio said there is no connectivity problem for Fort McMurray — the hospital has lots of video conferencing equipment — but the issue is whether or not there are patients here that will benefit from this equipment.
"The best way I can put it is it's a capacity thing, if the family doctors don't refer to the Mazankowski to see that there's heart patients that need to be assessed, then their numbers don't come up," said Amelio.
But O'Conner said these types of heart referrals are becoming common practice.
"With the population aging generally, and of course, with the so-called transient population in town, it's a very regular thing that we need to do."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mathew Klie-Cribb
Quelle/Source: Fort McMurray Today, 19.02.2011
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