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June 17, 2011



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Study examines why healthcare organizations embrace PCMH despite risk
A research team has observed that technology is at the center of a paradox in the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH), a primary care model that focuses on team-based medicine, a patient-provider partnership, and expanded access and communication. In a study published in Telemedicine and e-Health, the team concluded that while PCMH aims to cut costs by increasing preventive service and reducing hospital admissions and ER visits, it also requires high upfront costs for implementing and sustaining the technologies needed to carry it out — expenses that may not be made up immediately, if ever. Despite the financial risk, larger healthcare organizations have implemented PCMH to better serve patients, address the primary-care crisis, and take on new payment opportunities, the study found.
Read the study here
CONTACT: Corresponding author Cortney L. Hughes, Ph.D., Arlington Innovation Center for Health Research, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA (703) 518-2716

New Internet connections designed to expand telehealth in rural Wyoming
High-speed Internet connections have been added in 37 Wyoming hospitals and mental health clinics, in order to improve healthcare for the state's rural residents. The University of Wyoming's Center for Rural Health Research and Education (CRHRE) sponsors the connections using a three-year, $800,000 grant from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded in 2008 and used 85% for installation costs. Wyoming's Department of Health funded a significant portion, while individual clinics and provider groups pledged a share of the cost as well. Qwest served as vendor for the project, undertaken jointly with the Wyoming Telehealth Consortium.
Read more about CRHRE's telehealth effort in Wyoming
CONTACT: Rex Gantenbein, CRHRE director, (307) 766-6544

Call for research abstracts, speakers for 2011 mHealth Summit
The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the mHealth Alliance, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seek abstracts, presentations and speakers in the areas of research, technology, business and policy for the 2011 mHealth Summit. Organizers seek abstracts from the academic, public and private research sectors that highlight ground-breaking health research using mobile technologies in clinical medicine and public health. Submission deadline is midnight, July 8, 2011. The 3rd annual mHealth Summit will take place December 5-7, 2011 in the Washington, DC area.
Read registration and conference details


	American Well™ looks to physician practices for Online Care expansion Having persuaded some big-name insurers to adopt its Online Care telemedicine system over the past two years, American Well™ has begun taking on a more ambitious challenge — bringing its services to physician practices in the U.S. and overseas. The first practices have gone live on the system through some of the insurers with which they are affiliated, namely payers that are already Online Care customers. They include WellPoint, OptumHealth, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans for Hawaii, Minnesota, and Western New York. But the physician groups are subject to rules imposed by the payers, so American Well has also begun marketing Online Care for Providers directly to physician practices. "Many physician practices are looking to have independence in terms of operating services for their patients — and most importantly in terms of independence — is their ability to set the price for many advanced services," Roy Schoenberg, M.D., M.P.H., president and CEO of American Well Systems, told the News Alert. "We have a lot of physician practices that have heard about it in the last two or three weeks, and we're at various levels of contracting with many of them." Physician practices that sign up for Online Care for Providers pay American Well a setup fee to configure the system to their needs and train professionals in its use, as well as a monthly leasing or use fee. The leasing fee is a third revenue stream for American Well, which developed two key streams of revenue from its initial Online Care system ™ a license fee for the setup, and a per-transaction fee. If that sounds like a software company, there's a good reason. "We're a software company, so we provide the technology infrastructure for delivering a variety of telehealth services," Dr. Schoenberg explained. American Well won't disclose its fees, but says they depend on numerous criteria beyond number of physicians — including how much to integrate it with their electronic medical record (EMR) system, and whether to install an e-prescription system or incorporate an existing system. "The eventual cost to a physician practice is something that they are very comfortable paying. It falls in line with the expenses they usually have for an EMR system or an e-prescription system," Dr. Schoenberg said. In March, a study published in Health Affairs pegged the cost of an EMR in a primary care setting at $32,400 per physician to implement, plus $17,100 per physician for first-year maintenance (read the abstract here). "We believe that this will be a meaningful revenue-generating product for us later this year or at the beginning of 2012," Dr. Schoenberg added. Especially if consolidations continue among physician practices, resulting in fewer but larger primary care providers. Less than one-third of U.S. physicians expect to maintain private practices by 2013, according to an Accenture survey released June 13. While signing physician practices to the online service is on American Well's to-do list for 2011, so too are attracting government customers and self-insuring customers (typically larger corporations), and expanding overseas. On Wednesday, Dr. Schoenberg's company took the first step by signing a long-term agreement in which Medibank, Australia's largest integrated private health insurance provider, will promote American Well's Online Care services in Australia and New Zealand. The services will be marketed to general practitioner practices as well as to employer groups, rural communities, and millions of consumers in both countries.

Spectroscopy shows promise in developed countries pursuing HPV
Spectroscopy devices seem to have the best potential to become the technique of choice in the future routine clinical practice of colposcopy in developed countries following the human papillomavirus vaccination, a team of Australian researchers has concluded. In a study published in Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, the team said digital images generated through computerized colposcopy and transmitted in real time via the Internet constituted a form of telemedicine that allows both family practices and remote areas access to colposcopy expertise.
Read the abstract here

Michigan hospitals form network offering telemedicine consults with specialists
The St. John Providence Health System (SJPHS) Van Elslander Neuroscience Center of Excellence has finalized affiliation agreements with several Michigan hospitals for the creation of the statewide Neuro On Call Telemedicine Network. The network allows doctors to tap neurological specialists for both urgent and non-urgent telemedicine consults using robots for patients with stroke, neuro oncology, spine, movement disorder, epilepsy, and dizziness/balance and falls. SJPHS will establish an '800' call center number with a decision triage tree designed to route patients to specialists.

HOPEmobile brings telemedicine to underserved New Mexico communities
Project HOPE and UnitedHealthcare have rolled out the HOPEmobile, a 64-foot trailer designed to bring healthcare services and resources to underserved communities in New Mexico's southern border. Staffed by a nurse, the HOPEmobile enables patients to be seen by medical specialists from the University of New Mexico hundreds of miles away, using high-definition videoconferencing equipment. The HOPEmobile provides free comprehensive health screenings for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, pre-diabetes and other chronic conditions. Visits are planned throughout the state this year, including at the New Mexico State Fair in September and other community events.
Read more about HABITS for Life

Veterans Affairs denies plan to shutter Colorado telehealth clinic
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued a formal denial Wednesday that it was shutting down the Craig Veterans Telehealth Clinic (Grand Junction, CO). "Contrary to rumor, the Craig Veterans Affairs Telehealth Clinic is not closing," according to Paul Sweeney, VA customer relations chief. Sweeney added that the VA relocated an onsite podiatry care facility from the clinic to the Grand Junction VA Medical Center due to staff limitations and restrictions on the type of services permissible at telehealth clinics.

New Zealand Telehealth Forum established, as pilot program shows success
New Zealand's National Health IT Board has funded the establishment of the New Zealand Telehealth Forum, which will promote telehealth to reduce demand for high cost healthcare services, and improve the healthcare of people with long-term conditions — especially in rural and smaller regional centers. The forum's initial work includes scanning current and planned telehealth activities in New Zealand's public and private sectors, and identifying opportunities for telehealth projects the forum could support. The new forum comes weeks after Healthcare of New Zealand reported progress in the nation's first telehealth pilot program: Of 20 patients participating, the 10 who were remotely monitored had improved life expectancy and reduced hospital admissions.
Read more about the pilot program

Voalté app to link iPhones of nurses, clinicians at The Nebraska Medical Center
Nurses and clinicians at The Nebraska Medical Center will soon be using iPhones to send and receive text messages and make high-definition voice calls across the hospital VoIP system on one device with the iPhones linked to an integrated communications application by Voalté (Sarasota, FL). Installation of Voalté One for iPhone will integrate hundreds of iPhones to the PBX and WiFi systems of the medical center, the state's largest healthcare facility and primary teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Voalté was selected by the Medical Center after a year-long mobile technology review and assessment of legacy handsets and voice badges.
Read more about Voalté One for iPhone

Movers & SHAKERS

Joseph F. Renzulli, II, M.D., F.A.C.S., has been appointed chairman of the Medical Advisory Board of American Medical Alert (Long Island City, NY)…David Lundal, F.A.C.H.E., VP & Regional CIO for SSM Integrated Health Technologies, Dean Clinic and Wisconsin Integrated Information Technology & Telemedicine Systems, recently became a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives…David Gustafson, Ph.D., emeritus research professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, was awarded a $10 million grant by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study the use of communication and information technologies to improve health and healthcare services for older adults…Hakho Lee, Ph.D., a faculty member with the Center for Systems Biology at Harvard, recently authored a study, "Miniature magnetic resonance system for point-of-care diagnostics" in Lab Chip…A. Travis Spitzer, a principal with boutique investment banking firm Concordia Capital Partners, has been named to the board of directors of Specialists On Call (Westlake Village, CA)…Dana Holohan, Ph.D. director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Traumatic Stress (Salem, VA), announced the opening of a new center that also offers telemedicine classes…Edward Shin, M.D., Co-Founder of WellApps, Inc., announced the latest release of GI Monitor, a mobile symptom tracking app for Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis…U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget, recently introduced the "Veterans Telemedicine Act" (S 1124) and the "Veterans Rural Health Improvement Act of 2011" (S 1127)…Wayne Ward, VP of Sprint Emerging Solutions Group, discusses with Embedded M2M Solutions the advantages of their open approach and accessibility to application programming interfaces for telemedicine developers.

Upcoming EVENTS

Policy Workshop for Smartphones and Other Mobile Devices in Healthcare, sponsored by mHealth Initiative
June 21, 2011 - Boston MA
More Info
Eighth Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition
July 11-12, 2011 – San Diego, CA
More Info

To showcase your event here, please email us at events@telemedicinealerts.com



		*Telemedicine and e-Health* delivers more authoritative content from the peer-reviewed journal of record. The peer-reviewed publication,*Telemedicine and e-Health,* is published 10 times a year in print and online covering all aspects of clinical telemedicine practice, technical advances, enabling technologies, education, health policy and regulation and biomedical and health services research. The journal also deals with the clinical effectiveness, efficacy and safety of telemedicine and its effects on quality, cost and accessibility of care, medical records and transmission of same. For complete information and to subscribe, check out our website. *Telemedicine and e-Health* is an Official Journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

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