Video network brings city expertise to rural health

[Libby]

On a snowy morning earlier this month, one of the oncologists at Sletten Cancer Institute was scheduled to travel to Havre to see patients. Rather than risk the icy roads, Dr. Brian Abbott met with all of his patients over Benefis' REACH Telehealth Network.
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The REACH Network is a video conferencing system that links 18 health care facilities across Northcentral Montana and the Hi-Line.

The Network got its start in 1993, mainly as a way to share digitized radiology images between hospitals. As REACH received more grants over the years, it grew first as a way to offer education to rural providers and eventually to more clinical uses, said Gene Koppy, technology specialist for Benefis Health System.

Now physicians frequently use the network to meet with patients in rural areas, particularly when an appointment that would take a patient hours to reach is only going to take five or ten minutes.

Physicians can give physical exams from afar — via the video network — with the help of nurse in the same room as the patient. Doctors and nurses can use tools such as a digital stethoscope, so doctors can listen to a patient's heart without being in the same room, or a digital otoscope, which allows the doctor to look into the patient's ears and throat over the network.

The REACH network is used frequently for pre-operative education for orthopedic patients.

Benefis found that patients from the region were underutilizing the pre-op education, which was resulting in longer hospital stays after surgery, said Jack King, executive director of Northcentral Montana Hospital Alliance. Benefis started offering the education over the REACH Network so patients could watch it at their local hospital rather than in Great Falls, and surgeons saw an improvement in outcomes.

With an ongoing shortage of physicians, telehealth will help specialists reduce travel time and see more patients, including in rural areas, King said.

"It will be one of the tools that will help us with the physician shortage," King said.

Patients have been fairly willing to embrace telehealth. Some patients have even requested it in order to cut down on their driving.

Physicians have been a little slower to accept it.

"It's a non-traditional form of providing care," King said.

The doctors who use it seem to like it.

Telehealth doesn't work for everything.

"For what it works with, it works great," King said. "The applications are increasing all the time."

— Erin Madison