Who’s Watching Who?

I would like to introduce you to a new discipline, one that soon will be a major factor in providing health care: home telehealth. This area is fast developing into an opportunity for DME/HME providers.

I have had the good fortune of attending several American Telemedicine Association meetings. At these sessions, I have seen a multitude of items being introduced that I feel could be marketed by many home care companies.

I am sure that most of you are aware of what is meant by telehealth, but I will give you a very brief summary. According to the ATA, “telehealth” is a broad term that encompasses remote health care that may or may not involve clinical services. “Telemedicine” is only one facet of telehealth, and involves medical information that is exchanged from one site to another via electronic communication to improve patients’ health.

Remote patient monitoring, for instance, gives physicians, home health agencies, visiting nurse associations, health maintenance organizations and other health care professionals the ability to check their patients’ vital signs (and this is just the tip of the iceberg) on a regular basis without having to see them in person.

At an ATA exhibition in Tampa in 2004, I saw many of the new remote monitoring units that are available. It was also there that I met a physician from rural Kansas.

This doctor wanted to monitor patients who were as far from his office as 125 miles. His plan was to place 15 to 20 units in patients’ homes and establish a base monitoring station in his office, a rather simple way to allow him to check these patients on a regular basis. The cost of caring for patients who were not just around the corner did not seem prohibitive to him, even though this equipment is not inexpensive; he was satisfied that telemedicine was the answer.

The problem this doctor was trying to resolve is shared by HHAs and HMOs as well as patients with cardiac difficulties and family caregivers. They all seek better communication, both rapid and accurate. This is exactly what home telehealth provides.

When a home patient can be monitored as often as a health professional deems necessary, it is a giant step toward recovery. It also eliminates the necessity for a personal call, and will save many dollars as more care is provided. This opens the door for HME providers to become participants.

Someone must become the middleman and market directly to both end-users as well as health care professionals. Who better than the HME provider? This is not any different from the day that the first oxygen concentrator was introduced — and just look at what a major discipline that has developed into.

In order to provide remote monitoring or any telehealth equipment, just for starters an HME provider should be able to offer:

• The ability to maintain, check, service and/or monitor the equipment. It’s a big plus if there is a bio-engineer on staff;
• Knowledge about the demographics of the community;
• The number of patients the company serves with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure and other debilitating illnesses;
• Information about/relationships with HHAs and VNAs in the market; and
• Names of community health professionals, including cardiologists, surgeons, oncologists, all physicians with specialties (lung, geriatrics, etc.).

When you speak with manufacturers of home telehealth equipment, you will discover that many are seeking a way to increase their market share. It is imperative that they recognize your company as a home medical equipment leader in your community — and that you have a great sales team and good professionals to back them up.

Start your efforts now, because I am sure that in the next 12 months, or sooner, this can develop into a new source of income for providers through a symbiotic relationship with the manufacturers of home telehealth products.

Home telehealth is arriving at your doorstep, but nothing will happen until you make the first move. Please, do not allow this discipline to slip away by inaction on your part.

Sheldon “Shelly” Prial is based in Melbourne, Fla., with Prial Consulting and also serves as the director of government relations for Atlanta-based Graham-Field Health Products. In 1987, he founded the Homecare Providers Co-Op, now part of The VGM Group. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 321/255-3885.