Why isn't Telemedicine more widely adopted? (Part Deux)
This is an enigma. As several of my family and friends know, I am delving into telemedicine due to my graduate studies and pending new job. Here are some more thoughts in addition to a previous posting. Top Ten list Letterman style.
Top Ten Reasons Telemedicine has not been embraced by the medical industry
- #10: Telemedicine is not a direct healthcare technology (e.g., an MRI machine) so its importance is seen as auxilliary to clinicians.
- #9: Telemedicine has been promoted as the panacea that will fix all of medicine's woes. When it didn't produce as promised (no surprise based on the hype) people lost interest.
- #8: Consultants jumped on this hype-wagon and inundated providers and practices with how they can fix things just by hiring them and implementing their proprietary telemedicine setup. If you want to be annoyed, call a medical consultant regarding HIPAA and you will see what I mean.
- #7: Telemedince lacks real standards. (this is a biggie).
- #6: The benefits of telemedicine are not always passed on to the user. Example: if a department saves an organization by reducing patient evacuation costs to a different facility (this is our case) the savings are not dropped back into that department's budget. Not too many altruistic folks out there in this scenario like there is for, say, recycling. "Save Mother Earth" is a better rallying cry than "Use telemedicine so another department can bust their budget."
- #5 (A slight variation on a few above): Telemedicine needs to be viewed with a little 't' and not a big 'T'. It is a technology enabler, pure and simple.
- #4: Sustained adoption of telemedicine and embedding it into daily practices requires a 'true believer' in the organization. (sounds like Groove!).
- #3: Technology whiz kids mystify telemedicine into an arcane thing. Protecting telemedicine's 'secret inner workings' ensures IT job security. C'mon! Using the telephone for consults is a form of telemedicine. Email is too. And the fax machine.
- #2: Telemedicine does not attempt to augment current practice procedures and adds to them. I know of zero clinicians who want to take more steps while treating patients.
- #1: Telemedicine adoption requires a need so unless you are geographically isolated there isn't a sense of urgency to use it.
Lots of other reasons, equally valid like: licensure issues, reimbursement for telemedicine-delivered services, and efficacy (perceived and real) of telemedicine interventions. Am I a believer in telemedicine? By default, graduate project and position, I certainly am. But I am not the one who has to use it in lieu of other work-arounds. People take the path of least resistance on this sort of thing and clinicians are no different. The challenge is to make the telemedicine path as wide as possible.
One last point: telemedicine is a fact of life in many other countries than the U.S. Hmmm, are we the most advanced country technology wise or aren't we??
9:08:54 PM 
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