Telehealth, Home Devices Help Increase Bed Capacity in Hospitals

As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread, there is a growing need for remote monitoring of other types of patients. See how senior living centers are implementing this Virtual Exam Room.

Aaron Hand

Mar 27th, 2020

Dictum Health

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread, hospitals throughout the U.S. will be faced with too few beds if nothing is done to improve capacity, according to a study from the Harvard Global Health Institute. Telehealth efforts that move beyond a simple phone or Skype call to the doctor can help everyday patients get the care they need while leaving more beds available for COVID-19 patients—and providing the essential social distancing required to slow the spread of the dangerous virus.

Dictum Health is bringing advanced technologies to bear to improve the patient experience, providing the same kind of care that could be given in a hospital setting. The integration of videoconferencing and the simultaneous streaming of vital signs, cardiopulmonary data, and medical images creates a Virtual Exam Room (VER), enabling remote clinicians to examine patients to assess, diagnose, and recommend treatment.

To see an example of how this technology has been implemented at several senior living centers, see “COVID-19 Prevention at Heritage Senior Living” below.

A Dictum Health home kit enables patients and their caregivers to get the support they need in managing chronic conditions, recovering from surgery, or completing their care plan. With real-time remote patient assessment, the patient’s clinician or care team can respond rapidly to a change in health status.

Care Central Cloud Services enables live updates on the patient’s vital signs, cardiopulmonary status, and other health data. The cloud capabilities also enable a single clinician to monitor more patients at once, through Dictum Health’s patient monitoring and alerts feature. Clinicians would be informed on the health status of patients in real time for timely care intervention. The alert system can notify the care team via an email or text if test data values cross preset boundaries or if the patient is out of testing compliance. Alert configuration is flexible, allowing clinicians to create compliance and test threshold alerts as well as alert levels for each patient.

As the pandemic continues to impact lives daily, PMMI is using its channels to offer insights and reinforce that we are in this together. Listen to the special UnPACKed with PMMI podcast series to learn how PMMI’s members are navigating the COVID-19 crisis.

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COVID-19 Prevention at Heritage Senior Living

The spread of the novel coronavirus through a long-term care facility in Kirkland, Wash., is an indicator of just how dangerous it can get if proactive steps are not taken to preserve the health of residents and healthcare workers in such situations. Introduction of COVID-19 into the Life Care Center—where life continued as usual for the 120 residents and 180 staff, despite growing concerns about an unidentified “respiratory virus”—ultimately led to cases among 81 residents, 34 staff members, and 14 visitors; and at least 35 deaths.

Living centers around the country are heeding the warning. Wisconsin-based Heritage Senior Living—a collection of senior living communities that offer levels of care ranging from independent living to memory care units—has taken several precautionary measures to help reduce the potential for the virus to enter its buildings. This means restricting visitors, reducing the flow of medical providers and residents in and out of the building, and even sending some staff home to do telework.

To maintain a consistently high level of care in its communities amid the new COVID-19 restrictions, Heritage Senior Living teamed up with Dictum Health to rapidly implement telehealthcare services for residents in five of its communities.

Dictum Health’s VER-Clinic telehealth cart systems have been put in place, along with Dictum Health’s Care Central telehealth management platform. This allows an off-site physician or care team member to instantly consult with a resident needing care within a fully immersive Virtual Exam Room (VER).

The system is also fully integrated with Heritage’s PointClickCare (PCC) patient records system. The patient clinical data that is collected using the point-of-care cart system is seamlessly and automatically transferred to the right place with the right context in the right patient record.

“Faced with this suddenly complex world of challenges, we needed to act quickly to minimize the disruption to resident care, as well as the risk to them, their providers, and our staff,” said Tammy Schafer, Heritage’s vice president of operations. “With Dictum Health, we were able to act rapidly, getting the systems in place and connecting them with our providers and PCC records system. Not only does this allow our residents to receive uninterrupted care, but our own staff can also remotely monitor them and check in as needed.”

The VER-Clinic cart systems are equipped with Dictum Health’s FDA Class 2 cleared IDM-100 medical tablet with a full suite of connected medical devices and peripherals. This allows for a fully immersive and high-quality dialogue, with a live-streamed exchange of medical data between patient and provider.

“It is so important for us to move quickly and work closely with care providers who are on the front lines, like Heritage Senior Living, to help them maintain high-quality care as they deal with the challenging new risk factors presented by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mory Ejabat, founder and CEO of Dictum Health.