In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, health systems face numerous challenges in delivering seamless patient care across multiple hospitals. With the advent of telemedicine, specialty care, such as infectious diseases (ID) care, brings a multitude of benefits that positively impact both patients and healthcare providers. Some of the benefits include the following:
Reduced transfers to tertiary facilities, length of stay, and readmissions
Complex ID cases often require specialized care and subspecialty expertise. With ID telemedicine, your hospitalists gain access to a team of experts with subspecialist expertise, allowing your team to care for complicated cases locally, eliminating the need for transfers.
In a retrospective Open Forum Infectious Diseases analysis of three community hospitals (in largely rural areas/counties in northwestern Pennsylvania) in the UPMC system that converted from an in-person infectious disease care model to one based solely on ID telemedicine services provided by Infectious Disease Connect’s clinicians, the tele-ID group showed a trend toward shorter length of stay (LOS), less frequent ID-related readmissions at 30 days and transfers to tertiary centers, more frequent discharges to home, and low mortality within 30 days of discharge.1
Timely patient care due to eliminated travel time between sites
With the ongoing ID physician shortage, it is becoming more difficult to recruit ID physicians, especially to rural areas. Often, health systems are faced with employing a small number – or even a single ID physician – who travels between sites. Time spent on travel between sites can impact LOS and timely care.
With a dedicated ID telemedicine service, time previously spent commuting by onsite physicians can be spent evaluating and managing patients and providing timely and comprehensive care.
Reduced burn-out for Onsite ID Physicians
A standalone ID telemedicine service is a great model to support – not replace – your onsite ID physicians. Often times, due to limited resources and needs for coverage of peripheral hospitals within a system, ID physicians find themselves stretched thin having to handle complex patients in larger facilities while also assisting smaller institutions with peer-to-peer support. This has led to many ID physicians feeling burnt out, and unsatisfied due to inability to attend to all patient care needs.
Your onsite physicians can feel better supported with the availability of a reliable Tele-ID service that can alleviate heavy workloads, provide backup coverage for PTO, evenings, weekends, or leaves of absence, leading to happier onsite ID physicians and better employee retention.
Cost-Savings Through Supplementary ID Care
With ID telemedicine, your dedicated team of telemedicine ID physicians is available to support your onsite ID physicians and meet patient care demands.
When a health system takes a system-wide approach to ID telemedicine, the entire system benefits from shared monthly consult pools and coverage, meaning each facility will be able to provide supplementary ID care when and where they need it.
Streamline Your Care with a System-Wide Solution
ID Connect – Health System Solutions can ensure that your entire health system is covered, streamlining ID patient care with a single solution. It helps protecting your onsite ID physicians team from burn out while providing 24/7 coverage. And, with a dedicated group of ID providers, your entire network’s patients receive timely and top-quality care from academic, world-class ID physicians.
Contact sales@idctelemed.com to learn more and get started.
1https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/9/8/ofac410/6670900