Telemedicine has recently been expanded in Mississippi, allowing patients to have continued access to their doctors over the phone or internet. The University of Mississippi Medical Center began its telemedicine program in 2003, with a team of physicians training nurse practitioners for work in rural hospitals. Tearsanee Davis is Director of Clinical Programs and Strategy with UMMC’s Center for Telehealth. She says those practitioners could do most of the care patients need.
“They work in those hospitals, continue delivering care they normally would, but then for certain conditions for the patients that came through those hospitals, they could then enlist the support or the help of those emergency medicine physicians with the use of technology,” says Davis.
During the pandemic, emergency declarations eliminated many of the barriers to telehealth, allowing physicians to connect remotely with patients. And this year, Mississippi passed a law making that expansion permanent. Dr. Saurabh Chandra is the center’s Chief Telehealth Officer. He says doctors can now send patients home with Bluetooth-enabled medical devices so vital signs can be monitored remotely. Dr. Chandra says this is often used for diabetic patients.
“So in that program, we do send a tablet to the patient, we also send them devices for measuring their blood pressure and glucose. Once they take a reading, it connects to the tablet that they have at home, and then [when] we are called, it comes to our platforms.”
Experts say telemedicine helped to keep patients out of hospitals during the pandemic, and can continue to expand healthcare access in the coming years.
