Telemedicine Essay

Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications for the health and education of the patient or healthcare provider and for the purpose of improving patient care, treatment, and services (ATA, 2012.) In the study, Exploring the Potential of Telemedicine in Arkansas, they discuss the need to monitor and evaluate emerging uses of telemedicine as it expands into different settings and services and to assess the evidence regarding the benefits, risks, and costs of telemedicine. In 2003, clinical leaders at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences conducted a statewide obstetrical telemedicine network. This was the Antenatal and Neonatal Guidelines, Education, and Learning System Program, also known as ANGELS.

In return, allowing the underserved areas the perinatal specialty provider needed. Among the outcome from the ANGELS program has been the decrease in the rate of deliveries of babies with very low birth weights in hospitals without neonatal intensive care units from 13.1% in 2009 to 7.0% in 2010 (Lowery, Benton, & Fletcher, 2014.) The success from the ANGELS program built through telemedicine services led to the development of an additional statewide telemedicine initiative in 2006, known as the Center for Distance Health. As telemedicine was working in many cases, there were some obstacles that had to be overcome. Such as, Medicare reimbursement. The lack of consistent overarching reimbursement policies is one of the greatest challenges to fully integrating telemedicine services for the delivery of quality patient care (Reimbursement Overview, 2014.) Medicare provides reimbursement for telemedicine claims, however, there are a number of limitations within the Medicare policy that create challenges to health care access through telemedicine service