Spring Harbor Hospital extends telemedicine
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Gail Wilkerson, chief planning and development officer for Spring Harbor Hospital in Westbrook, said extending telemedicine services to emergency rooms around the state will enhance patient care
One can think of several reasons why doctors might want to “visit” patients using remote technology — to cut travel time, provide more efficient care and diagnose unusual cases. But telemedicine in Maine has been driven by more urgent considerations — to serve parts of the state where certain medical specialists do not exist.
The dearth of specialists, particularly in rural areas, has become an enduring fact of medical life. So hospitals and health networks have had to become more creative about connecting doctors with patients.
Enter Spring Harbor Hospital, a nonprofit psychiatric treatment center based in Westbrook, which last month announced it would expand its telemedicine links to include emergency rooms around Maine. Telemedicine allows psychiatrists at Spring Harbor to interview patients and doctors via live video feed to diagnose symptoms and suggest treatment.
The expansion is made possible by a $51,000 Rural Development grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will buy sophisticated video equipment for the psychiatric hospital. It is the first time a USDA grant has been used to expand Maine telemedicine.
The new system is good enough to make an accurate diagnosis even when doctor and patient are miles apart, according to Gail Wilkerson, chief planning and development officer. “It’s almost as if the psychiatrist is in the same room,” she says.
The system allows specialists to zoom in on details of a patient’s face, for instance, for evidence of a particular condition that couldn’t be detected on a conventional video monitor.
Spring Harbor already uses telemedicine to support child psychiatry services on Mount Desert Island — child and parent visit their primary care provider, and the telemedicine appointment takes place with the child’s primary care physician answering questions and helping with the exam.
The new grant will allow Spring Harbor psychiatrists to support emergency rooms in the MaineHealth network, a Portland-based health care coalition that includes Spring Harbor, Maine Medical Center and nearly a dozen smaller hospitals around Maine.
Wilkerson says the first ER telemedicine site will likely be set up at Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway later this year, followed by St. Andrews in Boothbay and Miles Memorial in Damariscotta.
“This is a vital service that many hospitals can’t provide on their own,” Wilkerson says.
Spring Harbor will evaluate the pilot program for two years to see if it should be offered throughout the MaineHealth network, she says. The technique will be evaluated to see if it improves clinical outcomes over other options, like giving advice by phone. One of the issues to be dealt with is how to obtain informed consent for emergency telemedicine. “The patients need to be able to understand what’s going on, even though the doctor isn’t in the room,” she said.
If the telemedicine pilot does prove beneficial, Wilkerson says MaineHealth is likely to expand telemedicine to other specialties where the coalition struggles with staffing shortages, including genetics and dermatology.
Of course, there are some conditions — paranoia, for example — where the remote link would be inappropriate, Wilkerson said. And, in general, children tend to take to the idea better than adults do. “It just seems natural to them to be in front of a screen, watching the doctor,” Wilkerson said. “They’ve adapted to it as part of their lives. For many of them, it’s their preferred method of being seen.”
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