Telemedicine Pilot Aims to Reduce Costs and Improve Access to Care for Rural Children

by Cheryl Haas

Nationwide Children’s Hospital, located in Colum­bus, OH, is one of America’s leading providers of pediatric care and serves a 32-county area in south central Ohio. Much of that area encompasses rural communities where the barriers to accessing pub­lic health are significant. Issues such as reliable transportation, babysitting services, and time to travel affect not only the rural populations but also the poor and working poor within Columbus.

Nationwide Children’s already operates 16 Close to Home Centers throughout its service area where specialty clinics – such as cardiology, neurology, and urology – are held by appointment. Five of these Close to Home locations also house pediatric urgent care centers.

Each clinic location offers different specialties depending on the needs of the community, which are as­sessed based on patient volume and acuity. The clinics are then staffed accordingly, with days and hours of service depending on the availability of local providers and the hospital’s specialty physicians. These physi­cians can spend up to two hours in travel to the outlying towns, an ob­viously inefficient use of their time. And because of the effort required to access healthcare, many of the patients – both inner city and rural – simply miss appointments, resulting in a need for more complex and costly care at a later date.

Pilot prior to full rollout

Executives at Nationwide Children’s knew they needed to find a better way to reach their young patients. They turned to technology and teamed with HealthSpot, a start-up that marries medicine and tech­nology in the form of an interactive telemedicine kiosk. Nationwide Children’s, ranked by Parents maga­zine as one of the 10 “Best Chil­dren’s Hospitals” in 2013, will roll out a kiosk pilot program on its main campus in the first half of 2014. The single unit will be placed near the hospital’s busy pediatric urgent care center, which is located near the emergency department. Kiosk patients will have quick access to hospital resources, if needed, during the pilot.

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