Pulsara Blog

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Justin Baker for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

While the world has dealt with the far-reaching impacts of COVID-19, the healthcare community has had to deal with many unique challenges. Coming up with and implementing procedures to protect both patients and staff from possible exposure to the virus is a tricky process, especially when in some locations, hospitals have also been dealing with patient surges. Keeping up with routine scheduled visits and elective procedures then becomes even more difficult. As a result, telemedicine has become commonly used for patient care visits and follow up appointments. 

In the largest pandemic of our lifetime, learn how clinical leaders in Colorado Springs, CO, are using mobile technology to not only manage the COVID-19 crisis, but also lay the foundation for the new reality of EMS, including 911-initiated telemedicine, Mobile Integrated Healthcare, Community Paramedicine, and telehealth. For the first time ever, the presenters will outline their modernized management system and share case studies and key takeaways that will help you improve patient care, upgrade team communication, reduce cost of care, and increase EMS agency and hospital revenue. Clinicians and thought leaders are creating a new path forward, based around the HIPAA-compliant, secure, mobile-first telehealth communication platform Pulsara.

What: 911-Initiated Telemedicine: How Colorado Springs, CO, Clinical Leaders Are Revolutionizing Emergency Medicine via Mobile Technology

When: Tuesday, Sept 8, 2020 | 1:00 pm EST /  12:00 pm CT / 11:00 am MT / 10:00 am PT

How: SIGN UP HERE

Keep reading to learn more!

New York Hospital Improves Communication and Door-to-Needle Times with Pulsara

Just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, care teams at Mount St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, New York realized that they needed a better way to communicate. According to an article published recently in a local Lewiston news source, Mount St. Mary’s chose to adopt Pulsara in order to open better lines of communication between EMS and emergency department staff.

Pulsara is a mobile-first telehealth and communication platform that connects teams across organizations. Through the use of mobile technology, Pulsara allows every member of the care team —from medics to nurses to physicians — to communicate on one dedicated channel for each patient. And for stroke patients at Mount St. Mary’s Regional Stroke Center, more efficient care team communication can have a major impact.

This is part 2 of our 5-part blog series based on the webinar “The Next-Gen Communication and Telehealth Plan of Action for Your Hospital.” Check out part 1 here. Watch the corresponding section of the webinar below, or listen to the full webinar here. 

Over the last four months, COVID-19 has forever changed the landscape of healthcare. Telehealth has experienced explosive growth since March, creating groundbreaking changes in telemedicine regulations and reimbursement opportunities. Prior to four months ago, only a small minority of systems utilized telehealth in beyond three to five percent of their appointments. Since the start of COVID-19, telehealth has grown to millions of claims in less than a few months. According to a published stat, the number of Medicare beneficiaries using telehealth services during the pandemic increased 11,700%. 

Looking at a graph of telehealth’s "hockey stick" growth is astonishing. For many years, there was no substantial change. March 2020 marks the shift between the blue and red growth markers. Telehealth shot from near non-existence to millions of claims practically overnight. 

This 5-part blog series is based on the webinar “The Next-Gen Communication and Telehealth Plan of Action for Your Hospital.” Watch the corresponding section of the webinar below, or listen to the full webinar here. 

Telehealth and telemedicine have gone through dramatic changes over the last four months, far more than many of us dreamed possible. Regulations and reimbursement are evolving rapidly, which has opened up the door to many new opportunities for using telehealth. Telehealth is helping us improve both the quality and the value of the care that we deliver to our communities. 

However, all this change will almost certainly have wide-reaching implications for your health system, especially in the acute care space. Over the next five posts in this series, we’ll discuss the rapidly shifting landscapes of telehealth regulations and reimbursement and how you can navigate them. We’ll also dive into some of the questions surrounding how to best leverage telehealth in the acute care space.

I grew up and lived most of my life in a very rural area. The majority of my EMS and ED nursing experience comes from rural settings, including a few years in a small critical access hospital. I was the only nurse in the 5-bed ER on night shift. We even locked all the doors to the hospital, and if someone presented to the ER for care, they had to ring a doorbell so I could let them in. No really—we did.

My, how times have changed with technology and medical advances. The recent COVID-19 crisis has affected virtually every healthcare professional in some form or fashion, and has potentially changed healthcare forever. Telemedicine has emerged to the forefront as a valuable option for providing care: both acute and chronic, in person, and remote. It’s gone from being a distant future option hidden behind miles of red tape to being one of the hottest topics in healthcare today.

As the summer progresses, more and more cities are experiencing a spike in their numbers of COVID-19 cases. The second wave of the coronavirus is closing in, which means that the remainder of this summer is vital. Now is the time to prepare for the challenges of the months ahead.

A new telehealth solution is an excellent way to plan ahead. Telehealth can greatly expand patient access to essential health services, ensuring that providers can continue to give them high quality care from a distance. Recently, the CDC came out with an article explaining how a secure telehealth solution can set a medical practice up for the best possible results in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

With the sudden influx of telehealth communication platforms rising to meet needs during COVID-19, barriers to telemedicine have been breaking with record speed. Unfortunately, with the increased use of technology comes increased security risks—risks that leave patient information vulnerable to hackers. 

Since COVID-19, phishing attempts and successes have increased significantly. In mid-April, Google saw more than 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. The pandemic has changed our relationship with technology and how we operate on a day-to-day basis. Now, fewer people are suspicious about receiving a text that appears to come from a government agency or a trusted healthcare provider. And even in legitimate technological encounters between providers and patients, unsecured information can fall into the wrong hands and give scammers the opportunity to make their phishing messages look more believable. 

In late May, Dr. James Woodson, the founder and CEO of Pulsara, sat down with Brian Zimmerman of the Becker’s Healthcare podcast series to discuss how telehealth can improve patient care and protect clinicians during COVID-19 and beyond. During the podcast, Dr. Woodson explains the potential of mobile technology in healthcare communication, how Pulsara streamlines the communication process, and Pulsara's role in the future of telemedicine. Listen to the podcast here, or read the interview below. 

By utilizing a free funding resource, healthcare and public safety organizations can more quickly and easily meet their recovery and preparation goals.

These days, many of our most basic tasks and functions happen using the smart device in our pocket. 

“I need a pizza!” 

There is an app for that. 

“I need a new car.” 

There’s an app for that, too. 

In this digital age, we consume vastly increasing amounts of data. If you think about it, we will never again use as little data as we do today. Every day, all around us, we figure out there is an app for pretty close to everything, from scheduling appointments to checking our banking statement to getting a ride across town. While the phrase “there is an app for that” has become something of a cliché, there’s some truth to it.

In 2017, a group of doctors and scientists conducted a survey study with paramedics to find out their thoughts on the future of EMS. More specifically, they were interested in finding out what paramedics thought about the possibility of using telemedicine in the back of the ambulance. Would video communication technology be able to help paramedics deliver higher quality care for their patients? Or would it be a time-consuming hindrance?

At the time, using video communication for pre- and out-of-hospital care was still considered a novel idea. Many paramedics expressed that the concept was a new one to them, which possibly accounted for the large number of neutral responses. There were also a number of potential problems with telehealth services that concerned them, including background noise, connection errors, interference with patient care, difficulty in set-up and use, equipment damage, and poor video quality.

On April 28th, JEMS Webcasts hosted an enriching webinar featuring a distinguished panel of EMS leaders discussing how their organizations are using mobile technology to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they plan to use those same technologies in the future.

Why has the healthcare system resisted telemedicine as a solution for so long? 

Telemedicine offers a world of opportunity for innovation and improvement in healthcare communication. Clinicians can use it to assess patients remotely, advise medical care without having to be on-site, and consult with one another to bring patients the highest possible quality in medical care. We rely so heavily on technology in every other area of life, it seems counterintuitive that old, outdated technology dominates the industry where saving time can save lives. 

Up until now, that potential has mostly gone untapped. Why?

Why did it take a global pandemic to convince healthcare providers to try telemedicine?

Up until last month, telemedicine seemed like a healthcare innovation of the future to many. But now, as we face the fallout of COVID-19, telemedicine is exploding at a rate that was unthinkable only a few months ago. Such dramatic numbers might make us ask why this has taken so long, when the concept of doctors being able to see patients remotely has been around for years.

At the end of 2019, video conferencing platform Zoom had 10 million registered users. In March, that number jumped to 200 million. While a fraction of that number are medical appointments, physicians are seeing record high numbers for virtual appointments. Stanford Health Care is seeing 3,000 patients through televisits each day, an unprecedented 40% of all their clinical visits. That’s 50 times higher than in previous months. Massachusetts General Hospital has seen their number of virtual appointments multiply 10 to 20 times in the last few weeks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following content originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Tim Nowak for EMS1 BrandFocus. Tim is the founder and CEO of Emergency Medical Solutions LLC, an independent EMS training and consulting company that he developed in 2010. He's been involved in EMS and emergency services since 2002 and has worked as an EMT, paramedic and critical care paramedic in a variety of urban, suburban, rural and hospital settings. He’s also been involved as an EMS educator, consultant, item writer, clinical preceptor, board member, reference product developer, firefighter and hazmat technician throughout his career.

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Improve access to care and triage less urgent calls for more efficient use of healthcare resources.

Many clinicians today find themselves splitting their time between clinical practice and resident education, which can make scheduling appointments with patients challenging. To mitigate some of the difficulty, some are turning to telemedicine to do everything from initial consults to sending results and answering patient questions. 

In fact, some health care systems are already offering e-visits where a patient can have the entire appointment with a provider electronically and in real time, so they never have to set foot in a physical doctor's office.