Situation

• Four Southwestern Ontario hospitals had joined to create the Huron Perth Health Alliance
• The Alliance needed to find cost-effective ways to connect to its hospitals, patients and physicians
• A fifth hospital is a customer of the Alliance's IT department and had to be included in any solution.

Approach

• After consulting with TELUS, the Alliance purchased a number of interactive Doctor on Call (iDOC) units through VideoCare, the Southwestern Ontario Telehealth Network
• VideoCare, a partner in the Ontario Telehealth Network, provides connectivity for the Alliance's videoconferencing needs

Business benefits

• Physicians can consult remotely with patients and with each other, avoiding the need for travel
• Patient waiting times have been drastically reduced
• Training for physicians and other healthcare providers can be provided remotely, reducing travel costs and time away from work
• One healthcare unit alone save $40,000 to $50,000 per week in travel time, hourly rates and time away

Solution

When the general hospitals in the towns of Clinton, St. Marys, Seaforth and Stratford joined to create the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance, residents of a large part of Southwestern Ontario gained access to more healthcare services and professionals than had ever been available to them before.  However, the distances separating the hospitals and the communities meant that the Alliance's IT department needed to find cost-effective ways to connect patients with healthcare professionals and healthcare professionals with each other.  In addition, the Alexandra Marine & General Hospital in Goderich, Ontario, had become a customer of the alliance's IT department and would have to be included in any solution.

After consultations with TELUS, the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance acquired a number of TELUS Interactive Doctor on Call (iDOC) Videoconferencing units.  These would be able to take advantage of the high bandwidth videoconferencing connectivity provided by VideoCare, the Southwestern Ontario Telehealth Network and funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

"My goal is to move information, not people," says Russell Dick, the Alliance's Director of IT.  "The iDOC makes it easy to do."  Designed to deliver high performance solutions for clinical environments, the iDOC is a highly mobile and lightweight platform that is ideal for remote health care training, teleconsultation, remote multi-hospital clinical and administrative meetings, as well as remote mentoring.

Instead of patients having to travel to see physicians or specialists, remote consultations can be arranged quickly and conveniently for all concerned - and unlike other videoconferencing facilities that use stationary cameras, iDOC units can easily be moved wherever they're needed.  "We can attach cameras to the main unit and wheel it into a patient room, so a physician can do a remote consultation," explains Dick.

Peripherals can also be attached, allowing remote physicians or specialists to conduct complete examinations.  "For example, we can attach an otoscope to an iDOC, which would then allow a remote physician to examine the inside of a patients ear," says Marty Gjesing, the Alliance's Web and Video Conference Specialist.

Of course, physical examinations aren't the only way videoconferencing facilitates access to healthcare.  "We had a number of psychiatric patients who were looking at a 6 month waiting list to see a specialist," says Gjesing.  "Using videoconferencing, we were able to fit them in within 2 weeks."

The iDOC unit is also ideal for professional training.  Every Friday at 8 a.m., the Alliance hosts a speaker who delivers a presentation in the main conference room at the Stratford Hospital.  This presentation is available via videoconferencing facilities over the VideoCare network to any hospital that wishes to join.  "We can have 100 people in the room itself and present to 10 other hospital sites," says Dick.  "These programs are accredited by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, so they enable physicians to generate the points they need to maintain their licenses."

All in all, videoconferencing and the iDOC units allow the alliance to achieve considerable savings.  "Calculating driving expenses, hourly rates and time away from hospital, our mental health unit alone salves $40,000 to $50,000 a week," says Gjesing.  But time and money are not the only issues.  "Our part of the country is subject to extremes of weather," says Dick.  "We've had roads closed by severe snowstorms, so even if our executives or physicians wanted to travel, they wouldn't be able to.  Thanks to the iDOC and videoconferencing, it's not an issue."

VideoCare's statistics show that the Huron Perth Health Alliance has become one of its biggest users.  "Three of my five sites consistently make the top 5 every month in terms of usage of videoconferencing," says Dick.  Gjesing believes this trend will continue.  "We've seen a 300% increase in usage over two-and-a-half years.  I'd like to see that number double again in the next two."