Minnesota is a state that tends to be ‘ahead of the curve’ in healthcare technology development, adoption, aging services, etc. Here’s another example. Online Care Anywhere, a virtual clinic that Fairview Health Services (created by American Well, started in Hawaii) and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota launched Monday, allows Blue Cross employees (the test group) to ‘visit’ via webcam a physician for a 10 minute visit, 24/7, compared here to a ‘Minute Clinic’ but one you don’t have to drive 30 minutes to. The co-pay is a routine $20 and records can be sent to your regular physician. What is not particularly cheering is that the purpose of the test is to see whether it saves costs while maintaining quality of care; one wonders what the baseline of that metric will be. St. Paul Pioneer Press/TwinCities.com article.
1 thought on “Telemedicine, live from your kitchen”
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Kitchen Physician Clinic
Good use of government grant:
http://www.hrsa.gov/telehealth/grants/states/minn.htm
Fairview is way ahead: they have been an innovator in this area for a number of years. Good for them!
John La Puma, MD
http://www.drjohnlapuma.com
More detail: The ambulatory electronic medical record system is a three-tier computer architecture using PCs running Windows 2000, HP Servers running Windows Server 2003 and Citrix, and IBM AIX Servers running Intersystems Cache DBMS, storing data on a Hitachi Storage Area Network. PCs are located at every Fairview site and networked via WAN/LAN technologies. Epic Systems Inc. software is used—multiple modules.