Sunday, October 14, 2012

HIT Improving Pacific Healthcare

Patients at the Army’s Pacific Regional Medical Command’s (PRMC) primary care clinics are keeping in touch 24/7 with their healthcare team via the Army’s Secure Messaging system powered by RelayHealth. The system enables patients to contact their primary care clinic to request prescription renewals, receive test and laboratory results, request appointments and referrals, get guidance from the medical team by email, and consult with the team on non-urgent health matters.

 The Army began implementing RelayHealth in their medical treatment facilities across the globe in 2011 and now every region has at least one clinic using the system. Originally, internal medicine and the Warrior Ohana Medical Home in Kapolei, Tripler’s Family Medicine clinic started the roll-out with a few providers.

Today, pediatric clinics, Army Health Clinic-Schofield Barracks, Aviation Medicine, Family Practice, Pediatric, and Troop Medical clinics have completed rolling out the system. The Brian Aligood Army Community Hospital, Seoul, Korea, and Korea’s USAHC-Camp Casey, USAHC-Camp Humphreys, USAHC-Camp Walker, and USAHC-Youngsan along with Japan’s BG Crawford F. Sam Army Health Clinic will implement RelayHealth in the near future.

PRMC provides a number of telehealth services throughout the Pacific and U.S to enable doctors and patients connect to specialty services at the Tripler Army Medical Center. Some of the telehealth services provided include psychiatric and psychological evaluations and treatment, tele-behavior services to help children and adolescents, TBI evaluation and support, tele critical care consultations, tele-education, tele-critical care consultations, remote monitoring, digital echocardiography, and speech therapy.

The Tripler Army Medical Center’s School Behavioral Health Team has partnered with the Hawaii State Department of Education and the Queen’s Medical Center to expand behavioral health services available using telehealth to help children.

The program called “Child and Adolescent Telehealth Services (CATS) is a collaboration with the School Behavioral Health Program (SBHP). SBHP provides child psychiatry, psychology, and social work, medication management, therapeutic intervention, and focuses on helping reserve and guard families on remote islands.