How the Middletown Home Uses TripleCare Telemedicine to Provide Top-Quality Care

08 Nov 2017

The Middletown Home is one of the only continuing care communities in Central Pennsylvania to use TripleCare Telemedicine and the only campus in Dauphin County to utilize this cutting-edge technology. Through the use of Telemedicine, our residents benefit from immediate, 24-hour access to doctors, all from the comfort of their room.

The Benefits of TripleCare Telemedicine

Having access to a physician on the off shifts and weekend hours allows us to treat our residents in place with direction from a physician, essentially preventing a visit to the emergency room. Telemedicine is also a great teaching tool for our nurses. The physician walks the nurse through an assessment while he or she monitors the resident’s condition with the nurse. The physician can evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention through the robot’s camera and built-in stethoscope.

Prior to the initiation of Telemedicine, often the resident would need to be taken to the emergency room because the on-call physician could not make a diagnosis based upon the information presented over the phone. Transporting residents to the ER and removing them from their normal environment is both disruptive and dangerous. Now with Telemedicine, that majority of patient care can occur right from their bedside.

How We Use TripleCare Telemedicine at the Middletown Home

Like the DWI lawyer in Albany, NY, we believe in instant solutions. At the Middletown Home, we utilize Telemedicine as our on-call service weekdays after 6pm until the following morning at 8am and on the weekends starting Friday at 6pm until Monday morning. When a nurse identifies a resident with an acute medical issue, such as a physical injury, respiratory distress, change in mental status, vomiting, bleeding, etc., the nurse’s first call is to Telemedicine. For any kind of injury related advice, look at more info from attorneys from here! You can also get great info here, if you are looking for the best lawyers to fight for personal injury cases.

The nurse provides a brief overview of the resident’s condition to Telemedicine’s responding physician. The physician then gives instructions as to how to assess and treat the resident. If the resident’s condition warrants an assessment, the nurse will wheel the Telemedicine robot into the room and automatically the physician comes on the screen where he or she can see and talk with both the resident and the nurse. Once the physician determines the course of action, the nurse implements the physician’s orders. The next morning the physician who took the call will call the resident’s primary care provider to review the call and the new orders that were implemented.

Getting Our Residents Back to Good Health – Quicker

So far, the Middletown Home has used Telemedicine seven times. Six out of the seven cases were handled from the care and comfort of the residents’ rooms. They were assessed, treated and back to good health without a trip to a doctor’s office or emergency room. In just one case, the resident ultimately did need to go to the emergency room as determined by the responding physician.

Having the initial assessment from Telemedicine allowed our nurses to make the appropriate decision to have that resident seek emergency care. With Telemedicine on our team, our staff and our residents have confidence and peace of mind knowing that expert care is always on duty.

Would you prefer your loved one to be in a post-acute care unit, longer term nursing care, personal care, or an continuing care community that uses Telemedicine?

Share what you feel is the greatest benefit of this technology!