SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center and SSM St. Mary’s Health Center are helping patients in rural areas access top-notch health care through telemedicine technology. A service called TeleTouch, which launched in May, allows area physicians to assist other health providers via advanced headsets and web cameras that can access other hospitals’ diagnostics equipment.
TeleTouch gives patients greater access to specialized, direct care in many cities across the region, including Columbia, Jefferson City and southern Illinois. The result: patients and health-care providers save time and gas money.
Among its many uses, the technology helps physicians evaluate ultrasounds for expectant mothers in high-risk pregnancies by maternal fetal medicine specialists. A video camera with two feeds connects the patient by Internet with the physician at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center, which is also participating in the program. One feed goes directly to the ultrasound machine, so a physician hundreds of miles away can see the same thing as the sonographer at the patient’s side. Another feed allows the St. Mary’s physician to communicate with the patient and sonographer.
As the sonographer looks at the images, the physician at St. Mary’s directs the scanning. “We go through the anatomy the way we would if the patient were right in front of us,” explains Dr. Dorothea Mostello, maternal fetal medicine specialist at St. Mary’s. “As long as we get something that looks acceptable and there’s no questions in terms of things that need more evaluations, we’re able to read to have a detailed look at the baby and save the patient a trip.”
Still, Mostello admits there’s an in-person visit has its advantages. “There’s no substitute for being in the same room and having face-to-face contact and being able to lay hands on a patient,” she says, “but it certainly makes some things possible that wouldn’t be otherwise.”
