telehealth

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Lohud

Sandra Eaton, a 66-year-old with complex medical needs, described the prospect of leaving her apartment in a rural upstate New York village for a nursing home as a death sentence…

…The health care dilemma is acutely felt in rural communities across upstate, where nearly one in five people are 65 and over, according to a study last year by the Empire Center. By contrast, about 15% of the New York City area is 65 and over.

Further, those rural areas tend to be poorer and have fewer doctors. It all comes together to widen medical deserts where thousands of New Yorkers receive limited health care in comparison to more affluent suburbs and cities.

While Long Island had about 148 primary-care physicians for every 100,000 people, the comparable number was 89 in the Southern Tier, 83 in the Mohawk Valley and 78 in the North Country, according to a 2018 report from the University at Albany-based Center for Health Workforce Studies.

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The Times Telegram

The Bassett Healthcare Network is cutting through distance and backed-up appointment books to get quick care for children who need mental health treatment…

…Bassett is likely part of a trend toward both telemedicine and telepsychiatry in particular, said Jean Moore, director of the Center for Health Workforce Studies.

“I think there is increasing interest in the use of telehealth for psychiatry services because it’s just so difficult to attract psychiatrists to many parts of the state,” she said.

And child psychiatrists are the rarest of mental-health providers in rural areas, she said. Bennett, for example, is the only full-time child psychiatrist accepting Medicaid patients in Otsego County, and some counties don’t have any.

The value of telemedicine is not limited to psychiatry, though, as other fields struggle to make better use of the workforce, Moore said. She mentioned as examples another Bassett telemedicine program that monitors high-risk patients in their homes, a teledentistry program that does a lot of the prep work before an in-person visit, and a program through which pediatricians can assess children in day care.

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Utica Observer-Dispatch

The Bassett Healthcare Network is cutting through distance and backed-up appointment books to get quick care for children who need mental health treatment…

…Bassett is likely part of a trend toward both telemedicine and telepsychiatry in particular, said Jean Moore, director of the Center for Health Workforce Studies.

“I think there is increasing interest in the use of telehealth for psychiatry services because it’s just so difficult to attract psychiatrists to many parts of the state,” she said.

And child psychiatrists are the rarest of mental-health providers in rural areas, she said. Bennett, for example, is the only full-time child psychiatrist accepting Medicaid patients in Otsego County, and some counties don’t have any.

The value of telemedicine is not limited to psychiatry, though, as other fields struggle to make better use of the workforce, Moore said. She mentioned as examples another Bassett telemedicine program that monitors high-risk patients in their homes, a teledentistry program that does a lot of the prep work before an in-person visit, and a program through which pediatricians can assess children in day care.

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Times Telegram

Sen. Charles Schumer wants to take action to forestall a growing shortage of physicians.

He visited Oneida Healthcare on Friday to call for passage of the Physician Shortage Act of 2018, which would create 15,000 more Medicare-supported training slots for medical residents. The number of doctors trained in this country is limited by the number of available residencies…

…Jean Moore, director of the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany, took a more nuanced view of the bill. To some extent, physician shortages are in the eye of the beholder, she said.

“That’s a trick question,” she said. “There’s a lot of different answers depending on your perspective on that. We need to find ways to use the people that we have more efficiently and to recognize that a lot of times when we talk shortage, it’s really maldistribution.”

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DentistryToday.com

Teledentistry is emerging as a practical solution for patients living in rural areas, according to the University of Albany. Its researchers report that teledentistry can provide critical services where gaps currently exist, especially for treatment planning and specialty consultations, as a means to improve access to oral health services in areas with inadequate availability of general and specialty dental care.

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OralHealthGroup.com

Teledentistry is emerging as a practical solution for patients living in rural areas, according to a new report by researchers at the University at Albany. The Oral Health Workforce Research Center (OHWRC) at the Center for Health Workforce Studies (CHWS) recently published “Case Studies of 6 Teledentistry Programs: Strategies to Increase Access to General and Specialty Dental Services,” summarizing findings from a study of oral health providers on their use of teledentisty services.

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Utica Observer-Dispatch

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield members will have a new, telehealth option for minor medical problems in the new year. For a $10 co-payment or $40 for those in high-deductible plans (until the deductible is met), members can talk to a primary-care doctor by telephone or videoconference on smartphones or other electronic devices about minor, acute illnesses. The service is not meant to replace the patient’s relationship with a primary care doctor; it simply gives patients a way to consult a doctor when their own isn’t available.

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Utica Observer-Dispatch

It’s a fact of rural life: Sick children and their families often need to travel to see the specialists who can treat them. Youngsters with complex asthma who face frequent emergency room visits and hospital admissions need to see a pediatric pulmonologist and not just a pediatrician or family doctor, said Dr. Kris Kjolhede, co-director of the Bassett Healthcare Network’s School-Based Health Program.

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