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Virtual Medicine

A couple of other things that I wanted to mention, as we think about really growing and expanding services, we’re going to have to look at the world a little bit differently. When I started in healthcare, when you wanted to offer a program, you recruited a doctor, you rented office space, you hired staff, and you start seeing patients. We still want to do it that way in many respects, but what you’re going to see happening in the future is more and more of virtual medicine options. That looks different than it looks today. It looks like you have a camera, and you have a physician who is somewhere off-site. They’re able to do an evaluation of that patient. They’re able to access their medical record. They’re able to access their labs, any imaging studies; they’re able to give the kind of evaluation that you want without that one component of being able to do hands-on on the patient.

The reality is here, we have a huge issue around mental healthcare and around psychiatric services. It’s an issue everywhere in the country, and it’s an issue here in Columbus County. If you go to our emergency room on any given night, you’ll have three or four patients who are there being held against their will. They are being involuntarily committed, which means we have to have sitters with them or law enforcement. It’s a huge issue. Part of the problem sometimes is that we can’t get psychiatric consults. We can’t get a physician to evaluate them.

Beginning in April, we have signed a partnership with Carolinas Healthcare System to be able to offer Telepsych services, both on inpatient, in the hospital and in the ED. They’ll also be able to do placement. What my goal is to provide these patients with the level of service and care that they deserve, and to be able to find the right setting for them, because it’s not in the hospital emergency room. It just isn’t. That’s not the right place for us to be delivering care.

We are also partnering with an organization to be able to provide tele-stroke and tele-neurology consults. Stroke is something that you need some immediate decisions around in terms of administering certain medications to a stroke patient to minimize the results of that stroke. It’s really difficult. In a community like this, we can’t hire neurologists who will be available 24/7 here in town. You can’t hire a neurologist in Raleigh or Charlotte who are available like that. It’s a really difficult specialty to recruit. We are working with an organization that’s going to be able to provide us, in many respects, like the Telepsych I mentioned, Teleneurology and Telestroke, which will be available to us 24/7, so a really critical program to be able to offer.

Summary

CEO Carla Hollis explains how Columbus Regional will adapt to a world becoming more virtual and the advantages that virtual medicine possesses, especially in terms of mental health.

  • A partnership with Atrium Health, will allow CRHS to offer Telepsychiatry services, both for inpatient services and emergency department patients.
  • Additionally, CRHS will be partnering with an organization to provide Telestroke and Teleneurology consults. These will aid in diagnosis and administering medications in a way that will allow for round-the-clock consultation.
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