| | DECEMBER 20219UTLOOKHealthcare Tech deployed telemedicine in our intensive care units specifically in our COVID-19 unit to minimize out staff's exposure and to conserve PPE. In our psychiatry and psychology department, the telemedicine experiment was a roaring success. Based on our Press Ganey surveys our behavioral health patients felt that the telemedicine experience was superior to an in-person visit.We also discovered some interesting new use-cases in our pediatric populations. We deployed a NICU follow-up telemedicine pilot for post-discharge care of our complex NICU graduates. Through this program, a seasoned NICU nurse would check in to review feeding, assess and reinforce safe sleep practices, and reassure the parents. This program led to a dramatic reduction in the number of ER visits and readmissions for our NICU graduates. Our physical therapy and rehabilitation teams also jumped right in to provide therapy sessions preventing our at-risk children from losing ground but also reinforcing therapies in the child's home environment. As the largest free-standing hospital in the state of Florida serving a predominantly low-income population, the one thing that we were interested in was determining the true cost of accessing care. We developed a novel tool that helped us compute the miles each family traveled to receive care at any one of our facilities. Once we computed the cost of travel, we added in the cost to take a day off from work to take a child to the doctor. This sophisticated economic analysis tool helped us get the true picture of the cost-saving that telemedicine had to offer to each of our families. The data gathered from this tool will help inform our value-based care strategy. In serving our low-income families through the pandemic we also became acutely aware of the digital divide. Many of our highest-risk patients were unable to access telemedicine due to lack of internet or due to lack of digital devices. In the future we foresee digital connectivity will be a social determinant of health and health systems will need strategies to address this specifically. In short, there is a lot of compelling data that shows that telemedicine can improve access, lower the cost of healthcare and also help overcome healthcare disparities in pediatric populations. We will achieve this only from ongoing investment in digital infrastructure, by simplifying the system for medical licensure with better interstate reciprocity, ongoing reimbursement for telemedicine services, and most importantly through community partnership and capacity building. This will ensure that access to telemedicine becomes a right not just a privilege for our children.As CMS administrator Seema Verma said, "I think the genie's out of the bottle on this one, I think it's fair to say that the advent of telehealth has been just completely accelerated, that it's taken this crisis to push us to a new frontier, but there's absolutely no going back." HTSaima AftabThere is a lot of compelling data that shows that telemedicine can improve access, lower the cost of healthcare and also help overcome healthcare disparities in pediatric populations
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