Telemedicine Moves Mainstream As Doctors Treat From Afar

From the Georgia Recorder: By Stanley Dunlap - April 2, 2020

Jacob Sutton of Monroe County is set to virtually meet with his doctor today as part of the 10-year-old’s routine checkup for his autism.

Jacob’s distant check-in with his pediatrician is part of the race to telemedicine as a means to treat patients in the wake of relaxed federal regulations and mandates to allow people to stay away from doctors’ offices and hospitals as much as possible during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Telemedicine, where patients use cell phones and tablets and other devices to remotely check in with doctors, could on the verge of moving from a tactic to help patients in rural areas to more widespread use as droves of new people use the service during the coronavirus outbreak, industry officials said.

Jacob’s grandmother, Angie Sutton, said she’s curious to see how he adjusts to his online appointment. She says he likes online education experiences.

“Kids with special needs that have autism have to have structure, they need a schedule,” she said. “It might not be the exact same thing that he was getting but it’s something that’s definitely better than not being able to see a doctor.”

The number of health care providers offering telemedicine is growing as federal Medicare limitations that often restricted it to medical settings in rural communities have been temporarily lifted since mid-March, said Rena Brewer, CEO of Georgia’s nonprofit Global Partnership for TeleHealth. It connects more than 600 providers and patients for clinical telehealth services.

The federal changes mean more insurance companies are covering telemedicine costs and reimbursing health care providers, which means more patients from rural and urban areas are taking advantage of the technology, she said.

“People are continuing to have medical issues that they were going to the hospital for pre-crisis, these problems are still arising,” Brewer said. “But do we really want to go to the emergency room now? And the answer is no because of the risk of becoming infected.”

The state’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John F. King recently urged Georgians to use telemedicine as a way to screen their COVID-19 symptoms instead of risking a visit to their doctors office or the emergency room.

The disease is placing a strain on many health providers to a point where they need to use other means to treat people, said Jimmy Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health, which represents dozens of rural hospitals in Georgia.

Telehealth could experience a major jump in popularity if the relaxed federal guidelines remain in place following the pandemic, he said.

“What we’re doing with (telemedicine) is we can carry the health care to the patient instead of having to bring the patient to the health care,” Lewis said.

The fear of contracting COVID-19 led to patients to cancel 50% of appointments at a health care clinic run by the Candler County Hospital, CEO Michael Purvis said.

Cancellations are turning into bookings now, thanks to telemedicine, he said. The clinic treated 20 people over the internet last week, he said.

The rural hospital started offering telemedicine service a year ago. However, patients didn’t use it much because federal restrictions were a hindrance and some older patients weren’t comfortable with technology.

Purvis said they had a head start when it was time to ramp up telemedicine, including an online app and a staff experienced in providing telehealth. That is especially true for a county of 10,000 with few available hospital beds, Purvis said.

It remains to be seen if the current crisis will spur a permanent spike in the use of telemedicine. But more rural physicians who want to use telemedicine can now receive six months of free access to consultation software through a collaboration of Mercer University’s School of Medicine’s rural health center and the Georgia Partnership for TeleHealth.

“Being able to really do telemedicine and provide that for patients who live a 100 miles from the nearest endocrinologist or the nearest heart failure specialist really helps underserved patients,” said Dr. Candi Nobles-James, an associate dean for students of affairs at Mercer University School of Medicine’s internal medicine department.

This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.