A Philadelphia health system is taking a “one size fits all” approach to better managing its telehealth program.
More specific, Penn Medicine, a division of the University of Pennsylvania which operates three hospitals and two regional medical centers in and around Philadelphia, is rolling up three formerly separate telehealth programs and several telemedicine specialties into a new initiative it’s calling the Penn Medicine Center for Connected Care.
The new telehealth center, which has 50 full-time employees, is headquartered at the Penn Medicine Rittenhouse medical facility in downtown Philadelphia, and will oversee all telehealth programs for patients in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Included in the new Penn Medicine Center for Connected Care are a 15-year-old program for treating chronically ill patients at home using video visits and wearables, a telemedicine service linking obstetricians to trauma surgeons caring for critically injured pregnant women and a consumer telehealth service for urgent care.
The new Penn Medicine initiative will also support a number of very specialized telehealth programs for transplant services, dermatology, ophthalmology, radiology, adolescent and young adult medicine, sleep medicine and complex neurological conditions. Other telemedicine specialty services include post-operative surgical visits for hematology oncology consultations and veteran’s mental health services.
The Center for Connected Care will provide remote monitoring for more than 160 patients each month in their homes, says Penn Medicine chief medical information officer Dr. C. William Hanson.
“Patients today increasingly expect to engage with healthcare providers with the same clickable convenience as buying holiday gifts online or ordering a ride-sharing service from their phone,” Hanson says. “Telemedicine is also an important part of our health system’s strategic growth, connecting clinicians in different hospitals and ranging from real-time care of our critically ill patients to the expansion of our home care services for patients at increased risk of being readmitted to the hospital after they go home.”
Penn Medicine isn’t saying how much it spends annually on telehealth technology or how much money is being spent to open and operate the Penn Medicine Center for Connected Care. But the health system does say telehealth and remote patient monitoring has reduced the readmission rate of the chronically ill patient monitored at home by 35%. “Connected care allows us to bypass the constraint of needing the patient to come to us in order to get the best medical care,” Hanson says.
Penn Medicine includes Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital, co-founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751. Overall Penn Medicine operates 2,546 beds, employs 5,351 physicians and conducts 3.7 million outpatient visits annually.
Keep up with latest coverage on digital healthcare by signing up for Internet Health Management News today.