Telemedicne

[congomedic]

Hey by the way, anyone has telemedicne with video cam in your rigs? If so hows it going? I know Baton Rouge was onboard.Any others? (No Axe)

[DwayneEMTP]

Hey by the way, anyone has telemedicne with video cam in your rigs? If so hows it going? I know Baton Rouge was onboard.Any others? (No Axe)

'Aight! I get there's not ax! So far... :-)

I haven't used it in the rig, but have in a small hospital I worked with. 6 beds I think. 55ish year old woman went, in the blink of an eye, from speaking and behaving normally to sounding as if she was speaking Swedish. (Walkermedic? you know Swedish?), all vitals well within acceptable limits for situation, Cin stroke scale neg, balance confident, facial expressions/extrem movement/annunciation clear/equal/coordinated, in other words the only symptom was the language.

I called a stroke alert at the ER but also got the doc on the phone and told her that I can't prove a stroke but I don't know what else could be going on. All other assessment values were within acceptable limits for situation. At the ER they already hat the telemonitor hooked up with a neurologist in Colorado Springs who did an assessment, consulted on treatment and instructed her to be flown instead of driven to their ER.

Turns out it was a brain tumor that killed her a few weeks later.

great tool, but there is likely going to be a pretty severe learning curve and many, many boundaries to be drawn while folks learn to use it in the rigs I'll bet.

Dwayne

[emtannie]

We don't have it in the rigs, but it is used a lot in our hospital, to work with specialists at other hospitals when it isn't efficient or in the patient's best interest to be transported 3 hours (one way) for a consult or followup.

I am curious - how do the Baton Rouge medics like it? Do they use it often? I would like to hear some success stories about it.

[tniuqs]

Hey by the way, anyone has telemedicne with video cam in your rigs? If so hows it going? I know Baton Rouge was onboard.Any others? (No Axe)

Bhwaaa Haaa Ha .

[FireMedic65]

I honestly cannot really see a need for this in a normal run of the mill ambulance. Transport times are often way too short for it to be cost effective. Rural services that have long transports or doing a lot of IFT might benefit from it. Personally, I think this could be a downfall for a lot of services. It would lead to providers getting lazy and using it for docs to do all their work for them, unless, of course there was a strict criteria for using it. How often do some providers slap on a pulse ox and use that for a pulse? Or use the monitor for the same thing or all blood pressures? It happens. But then again, having such a tool could not be bad.

All that being said, I would rather have it and not need it over needing it and not having it.