The Mayo Clinic recently conducted a three-year study providing guidance to neonatal teams at six different hospitals in rural and low-income cities. Leading author of the study and a fellow in neonatal and perinatal medicine at Mayo, Dr. Jennifer Lang, concluded that the guidance provided to the hospital teams, “…prevented having to transfer some infants for critical care and helped stabilize others before transfer,” an article from MedCity News reports. “Every transfer avoided saved the system $35,000, for a total of more than $1 million over the course of the three year study…”
Fang says the rural hospital teams are often unable to manage emergencies with critically ill newborns and their methods in providing care do not usually follow uniform level of care as well as stray from guidelines.
The six participating hospitals utilized the Mayo telemedicine guidance in 77 cases throughout a three year period. “ More than half of those cases involved the Mayo neonatologists remotely guiding the other physicians in airway management, chest compressions, medication dosages, thermoregulation, procedures, identification of congenital anomalies, and palliative care,” the article states.
Out of all the cases, one-third resulted in the baby being able to remain at the birth hospital and avoid expensive medical transport along with ICU admission. Almost 95 percent of the participants said they would continue to use the telemedicine service and found it very instrumental.
“To ask a family doctor to do this on their own is really asking them to do the impossible,” Fang says, “But having a neonatologist there to guide them step by step allowed these babies to survive.”
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