Telemedicine News
Texas Wal-Marts to Feature Telemedicine Clinics
(Source: Healthcare IT News, July 21, 2008)
Select Houston-area Wal-Marts will offer telemedicine clinics thanks to a partnership between Houston-based companies My Healthy Access and NuPhysicia. The companies will operate under the trade name "Walk-in Telemedicine Health Care."
The program is one of the service lines of NuPhysicia, which operates telemedicine methods developed by the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Glenn G. Hammack, NuPhysicia's president, said the program replaces the care typically provided by nurse practitioners at retail clinics.
"Our alliance takes that care a step further, bringing new levels of service, convenience and value to the retail healthcare setting through interactive physician visits."
"In keeping with our mission to continually search for the best approaches to retail healthcare, we began evaluating proven telemedicine methods, and this led us to NuPhysicia," said My Healthy Access's president, Kathleen Delaney. "Our partnership with NuPhysicia will no doubt enhance services in our retail clinics to better serve our patients and offer us even greater potential for new business strategies in the future."
Under the agreement, physicians will use NuPhysicia's remote telemedicine through paramedics who will examine patients under the physician's direct supervision.
A two-way video communication is initiated during the patient visit, using split-screen technology. The patient can see and speak directly to the physician and see exactly what he/she is seeing on the screen. Electronic medical devices will allow the physician to visually examine the patient and even listen to his or her heart and lung sounds. The on-site paramedic acts as the physician's hands and carries out the treatment instructions.
"Simply put, the paramedic serves as the 'hands' of the physician, who uses medical devices such as an electronic stethoscope to listen to the heart, or other scopes that can see down the throat or in the ears - and the physician sees and hears everything live and in real time," said Hammack. "The physician performs the exam as if he or she was in the room with the patient."
"Our telemedicine methods have served hundreds of thousands of patients from Texas to as far away as the South Pole," continued Hammack." Similar live-video technology is now monitoring the most critically ill in ICUs across the nation," he added. "Now we can offer the residents of Houston access to convenient, high-quality health care."