By - Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE), Idaho’s statewide health information exchange, has announced it is implementing a remote patient monitoring (RPM) platform to boost telehealth services and remote patient care.
IHDE will integrate Connect America’s RPM platform, intending to deliver the platform to connect individuals to their respective providers remotely.
Prior to the novel coronavirus outbreak, a limited number of patients were actively using telehealth, and even some providers were wary of adopting the tool. However, HIEs, EHR vendors, and health IT organizations have worked to help curb the pandemic by making telehealth a mainstream option.
With Idaho being a rural state, individuals and providers across the state can benefit from this platform. Implementing a telehealth alternative increases safety and convenient care options for older patients or those who live far away from their provider.
“The integration between Connect America RPM and IHDE will help facilitate public health mitigation strategies by creating a safer option for healthcare personnel and patients,” said Hans Kastensmith, executive director of IHDE.
“Connect America offers expertise, innovation and commitment to service, which makes them the ideal partner. Their web-based platform provides numerous entry points to monitor, educate, and engage patients and its proprietary predictive analytics can identify and stratify risk factors. We are excited about our selection and look forward to working with Connect America to bring much-needed telehealth opportunities to IHDE members,” Kastensmith continued.
Telehealth boomed during the peak of COVID-19, increasing by more than 50 percent in primary care, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Telehealth integration has not only kept patients safe, but it has also kept clinicians and staff members safe while preserving personal protective equipment.
IHDE will now give patients remote access to preventative, routine, and chronic care, which may reduce burden and improve patient care. The web-based platform offers several services to educate, engage, and monitor patients remotely. The platform also utilizes a predictive analytics tool to identify and assess risk factors.
While it is critical for rural hospitals to integrate telehealth, those same healthcare organizations have trouble connecting to an HIE and it is a significant barrier for rural hospital telehealth adoption, according to a study published in The Journal of Rural Health.
Rural hospitals and providers do not possess the same spending power as larger hospitals. As a result, rural hospitals do not have strong telehealth adoption, health IT, and interoperability. Additionally, rural areas of the country have a higher number of health disparities, a higher percentage of older adults, and experience more natural disasters, according to the researchers.
While telehealth could help rural hospitals deliver and improve care to their community, several barriers disrupt telehealth adoption, such as high implementation cost, health IT concerns, and concerns about telehealth technology.
Rural hospitals were about 65 percent less likely to adopt the top eight telehealth services than metro areas. Furthermore, rural hospitals adopted 55 percent fewer telehealth services and rural hospitals saw 43 to 49 percent more telehealth barriers than urban hospitals.
Rural hospitals were also less likely to access patient data from external providers and were less likely to query patient information from an outside provider. As a result, rural hospitals were less likely to exchange patient data from outside providers than their metro counterparts.
However, a robust health IT system can ease telehealth integration and provide several different integration options.
HIEs are crucial for connecting communities and ensuring patient medical records are available at all times. However, for rural hospitals and providers, participating in an HIE is not always a reality.
Researchers said COVID-19 should activate user-friendly telehealth platform integration in rural areas that could help boost patient engagement. But both providers and patients would have to undergo training to improve this area.
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December 04, 2020 at 12:18AM
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Idaho Health Information Exchange Boosts Telehealth Solution - EHRIntelligence.com
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