Hancock County health project goes online
The Hancock County ambulances now packed with a little kit of online instruments may also carry the future of medicine in a place where money is scare, population is sparse and doctors are lacking.
The east Georgia county, like many rural counties, lacks a clinic that’s open after normal business hours or has specialist doctors’ offices or an emergency room.
That means a lot of people call an ambulance or go to emergency rooms as far as 25 miles away for things that aren’t real emergencies. It’s a time-waster for patients who have an ear infection, but the options are few in Hancock County.
About 68 percent of the county’s ambulance calls are not emergencies, according to Mercer University, and those calls often tie up the county’s ambulances.
But what’s been a problem for Hancock County residents and is a big consumer of hospitals’ and ambulances’ time and resources has attracted more than a dozen private, public and nonprofit organizations to partner for a fix that’s new in Georgia.
It has to do with high-tech instruments and ambulances that carry their own secure Internet connections, even in cellphone dead zones.
“Telehealth is going to change rural health,” said Dr. Jean Sumner, associate dean for rural health at the Mercer University School of Medicine. For months, she’s been part of a team organizing what’s now officially underway as the Hancock County Healthcare Access Initiative.
The yearlong mission is to see how to increase access to health care using telemedicine in a way that’s not too costly.
What’s called a telehealth or telemedicine “bag” is more of a padded box, a little bit bigger than a briefcase. It carries a tablet computer and instruments for looking inside ears, noses and airways and for checking blood pressure, blood sugar and other vital signs. Plenty of Georgia’s rural schools and clinics already are linked to the world via bigger telemedicine kits.
Georgia physicians’ rules say a telemedicine consultation is only legitimate if it is equal to or better than an in-person consultation. Sumner is convinced that it is.
A trained Hancock County ambulance technician will beam high-resolution images of the instruments in a telemedicine bag to doctors located somewhere else. Also, real-time heart and lung sounds as well as vital signs are sent back to a hospital or clinic nearby. There, the doctor on call can diagnose things that aren’t true emergencies -- like that ear infection -- and recommend treatment.
People who need or want to go to an ER will always go, Sumner said.
But the telemedicine consultation can save people who don’t need it a time-consuming and possibly stressful visit to the hospital.
During the pilot, organizers want to try deploying mobile telemedicine for things besides 911 calls, such as post-hospitalization check-ins with patients and even elective visits for patients who are willing to pay for a house call.
After the pilot, operations will be turned over to Hancock County management, Sumner said. She said her school’s role is to facilitate change.
“Our goal is to offer the model to anybody who wants to use it,” she said, adding that she’s already received a call from a curious rural health researcher in Texas.
The project will become a model for the nation, said Sherrie Williams, executive director of the Georgia Partnership for TeleHealth, a nonprofit that promotes telehealth programs in rural and medically underserved areas across the state and one of the pilot partners. “As care becomes more patient-centered, it only makes sense to provide health care assess where the patient is, in the home,” she said in a written statement.
During the pilot, project sponsors will gather data on costs, results and patient satisfaction.
A one-time state grant of $100,000 paid for the bags.
Among the other partners in the pilot are Putnam General Hospital and Navicent Health.
To contact writer Maggie Lee, e-mail mlee@macon.com.
This story was originally published September 2, 2015 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Hancock County health project goes online ."