By Anuja Vaidya
– Ohio-based Cincinnati Children's works with Parkview Health will launch telehealth clinics to expand access to health care for children seeking pediatric neurosurgery, rheumatology and drug-resistant epilepsy.
Beginning in August, the telehealth clinics will allow Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Parkview Regional Medical Center clinicians to connect with Cincinnati pediatric specialty physicians for consultations in the above specialties. Children from Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio receiving outpatient care at Parkview Regional will be eligible for these counseling and care coordination services.
“The goal of our new, enhanced partnership with Cincinnati Children's is to better meet the needs of our community,” Tom Miller, MD, chief medical officer, Women's and Children's Service Line, at Parkview Health, said in the news release. “Our partnership is patient-centered and will increase access to Cincinnati pediatric specialty care for Fort Wayne area families. This could reduce or even eliminate the need to travel to receive specialty pediatric care. For patients who need care at Cincinnati Children's, a coordinated approach to referrals and local follow-up appointments will streamline these families' experiences.”
The partnership builds on a partnership between Parkview Health and Cincinnati Children's that began in 2018. The initial telehealth partnership focused on enhancing pediatric care expertise in cardiology, gastroenterology and general surgery.
Under the new partnership, the organizations will share best practices and treatment protocols in addition to providing telehealth counseling for children with complex medical needs. Teams from both organizations will spend time on each other's campuses to support the expansion of specialty care delivery. They also plan to add more medical specialties to their partnership through a virtual care center.
As access to health care is a major issue in rural areas and underserved communities, health care organizations are increasingly turning to telehealth to expand pediatric specialty care services.
For example, Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital announced plans in March to expand its neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) neurology program through telehealth. Through the expansion, the hospital's neurologists can monitor babies remotely and recommend treatments to caregivers at three Level III NICUs in Utah and one in Billings, Montana. The Hospital's Neurology team will use remote EEG technology to provide continuous seizure monitoring for babies in Level III NICUs.
Another recent telehealth collaboration aimed to enhance access to neonatal intensive care and higher acuity care for newborns in New Mexico. San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, New Mexico, entered into a telehealth partnership with Presbyterian Hospital's NICU team late last year. Through the partnership, San Juan Regional clinicians can participate in virtual video consultations with Presbyterian's NICU team and access continuing medical education.
“The telemedicine component … allows us, I think, to be more comfortable keeping babies closer to home,” said Brad Scoggins, DO, pediatrician and medical director at San Juan Regional. mHealthIntelligence in an interview. “We could not [do that previously] because there was this big gap in knowledge and experience. Not only from the doctors' point of view but also from the nurses and respiratory therapists [standpoint]. If [neonatologists] it can literally be at the bedside with the telemedicine part, I think that helps [our staff] we feel much better about the quality and the kind of work we do with the babies.”
However, trends in pediatric telehealth use vary, with one study showing that pediatric telehealth use was inconsistent across subspecialties.
For the study, published in JAMA Network Openresearchers evaluated data on 549,306 patients who received care at eight pediatric medical groups within the Children's Specialty Care Coalition (CSCC) between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2021. Pediatric care spans 11 subspecialties: cardiology, orthopedics, nephrology, . , dermatology, genetics, behavioral health, pulmonology, endocrinology, gastroenterology and neurology.
They found that the use of virtual visits in some subspecialties, such as genetics, behavioral health and pulmonology, was high, ranging from 38.8 percent to 73 percent. But the use of virtual visits in others, such as cardiology, orthopedics and urology, ranged from 6 percent to 29 percent.
