Dive Brief:
- Telemedicine may reduce error rates in rural emergency departments,according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, FierceHealthIT reports.
- Researchers, who were based at various campuses of the University of California, found that rural ED docs made med administration errors only three percent of the time when working with on children's cases with pediatric critical care physicians from an academic children's hospital via telemedical hook-ups.
- Results mere much less favorable for telephone consultations (10.8% med administration error rate) and no consult (12.5%).
Dive Insight:
Research has suggested time and time again that giving ED physicians access to specialists via telemedicine can have very positive results. The question now is how to get consulting doctors paid efficiently for their work with remote colleagues. While telemedical technology may be improving, reimbursement for such services is lagging far behind. Perhaps insurance companies will look at the big picture -- improved patients means cheaper care -- sometime soon and stop dragging their feet.