As businesses look to cut their health care costs and as the nation struggles to find a way to provide health care for all at an affordable price, a new tool—telehealth—has the promise to improve access, quality and efficiency of delivering services.

That was the message from Sandy Shewry, president and founding CEO of the nonprofit California Center for Connected Health. She also spoke at the July 17 Health Care breakfast hosted by the Metro Chamber and the Sacramento Business Journal.

Currently, UC Davis Medical Center is the flagship, leading the state’s development of telehealth, receiving a $22.1 million three-year contract from the FCC and contracted to provide 24-hour on-call pediatric intensive care unit specialists to a few rural county hospitals via telehealth.

Telehealth is defined as interactive health care over a distance using information or telecommunications technology.

How telehealth works:

• Provides “real-time” consultation via teleconferencing between a patient and provider (like a doctor) or provider to provider
• Captures patient data, like retina scans, X-rays, for forwarding to a provider for future review (called store and forward)
• Tracks a patient’s vital signs for in-home monitoring and report back to the clinic

How telehealth can improve medical care in California:

• Provides doctors and others located in rural areas with connection to specialists at urban medical centers
• Improves underserved urban neighborhoods by providing specialists/consultations
• Creates “virtual” tumor boards for clinical trials in rural areas and for having specialists review treatment plans for outlying patients
• Offers language interpretation/treatment in a patient’s preferred language
• Improves and reduces costs of prison health care. California prisons are the largest users of telehealth in California. By providing patient-provider consultation via telehealth, a prison doesn’t have to spend resources having two officers transport a prisoner-patient to a hospital.

A 2002 study of telehealth programs in Veterans Administration hospitals showed:

• 40% reduction in ER visits
• 63% reduction in hospital admissions
• 63% reduction in hospital bed days of care
• 64% reduction in nursing home admissions
• 88% reduction in nursing home bed days

As many as 1,000 community health centers want to be part of the California Telehealth Network, Shewdry said. Nationwide, the FCC has dedicated more than $417 million for pilot programs. Many areas have to be wired with broadband telecommunications, and money is available for that from state and federal sources, including $4.7 billion for broadband technology and $2.5 billion for telemedicine in federal stimulus funds.