By Curran, Robert
To improve health care for patients in northeastern Pennsylvania and statewide, an outreach program will begin this fall to get more doctors to adopt health information technology and use high-speed broadband telecommunication networks.
A study from the “Connect The Docs” project points out that the challenges include Pennsylvania’s large rural regions and its elderly population.
Both of these are abundant in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tim Welby, president of the Lackawanna County Medical Society, had high praise for the program, saying it would help people, especially senior citizens, who live hours away from medical services.
“This is a way for a senior, or anyone, to get sub-specialist care without having to travel,” he said, adding that more use of telemedicine is on the way.
The Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton will be opening next year, and Welby said that, while not speaking for the people who will be administering the college, he believes its officials will be very keen on new techniques and modern medicine and that “medicine and technologies of the near future will certainly he part of the students’ education.”
Connect The Docs is a project of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, with help from Affinity Technology Consultants, Harrisburg. Implementation will take place through the outreach program.
Darlene Kauffman, associate director, payer relations with the state medical society, said the project is aided with a grant of $404,500 from the State Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED).
The Connect The Docs study suggests, according to the state medical society, that connecting doctors electronically through high- tech communications tools, such as telemedicine, could help alleviate the problem of reaching the elderly and those in rural areas.
Dr. Peter Lund, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society and founder of its Institute for Good Medicine, said that “the health care community in Pennsylvania must find ways to accelerate the use of technology, especially in rural areas of the state, to meet an increasing need for such care by an aging population.”
The state study said that access to medical specialists in many rural Pennsylvania communities is difflcult. The study notes that more than three million state residents are located more than 25 miles from the nearest Pennsylvania-based high-risk pregnancy specialist.
“Travel time in those locations can be lengthy, making a complicated pregnancy an ordeal for the patient and possibly risking the lives of both the mother and child,” the study said.
Pennsylvania is ranked 37th in the nation for actively practicing physicians per 10,000 elderly citizens.
The study said that rural elderly who have to travel long distances to visit a specialists may be less likely to seek treatment, even for potentially life-threatening conditions.
“Making telemedicine available in rural communities would give patients and their local physicians computerized access to consultations with specialists, such as radiologists, dermatologists and cardiologists without having to drive long distances,” the study said.
For physicians, according to the study, “better telecommunications connectivity means they can effectively use new tools that improve the efficiency of their practice. Tools include electronic prescribing, consulting electronically with specialists on radiology and other diagnostic tests, and communicating more quickly and efficiently with hospitals.”
Lund said that “investments in communications technology within health care would ultimately help Pennsylvanians gain better access to medical care.”
He added that “this is particularly true for rural communities, but even urban locations will benefit to the extent that improved connectivity makes it easier for physicians to access critical health care information about their patients.”
According to the study, nearly 300 physicians throughout the state do not have access to basic broadband service.
Copyright Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal Sep 2008
(c) 2008 Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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