Telemedicine Case Analysis Case Solution
Case Synopsis
This case focuses on the innovative implementation and success of the IT applications such as the patient-present telemedicine consultation services. Partners Healthcare’s TeleStroke service which is managed by the Massachusetts General hospital Neurology Department services the vital needs and is financially self-sustaining in providing the telemedicine consultations services to the stroke care hospitals.
This case emphasizes on the extending and the implementation of the process of Telemedicine which is an IT based innovative system which provides the clinical healthcare at a distance. This system removes the barriers of the different medical services which are usually not available in the rural areas. It also provides a communication medium between the medical staff and the patients.
In the light of these services, this case focuses on the requests of some of the hospital which have been received by Shawn Farrell, executive director at Partners Tele Stroke program, who wants to implement a new plan for expanding the scope of the telemedicine consulting services which are provides by the company currently. He wants to expand the scope of tele medicine beyond the general healthcare to a much wider and a diversified treatment of the stroke and the pediatric patients.
The key issues which are being faced by Farrell now lie in the successful implementation of all the equipment's and the IT software which should be implemented in the best way possible to provide the required services. Currently, the program provides the consulting services for the patients that are suffered from the stroke problems however, the expansion would provide tele medicine consulting services for the Pediatric critical care medicine. A detailed strategic analysis needs to be, therefore, performed in order to recommend that whether Partners should expand and how the issues such as the technical, clinical and organizational would be resolved in this implementation process of this new opportunity.
Business Goals & Strategy Analysis
The business model of the company works by providing the telemedicine consulting services to those hospitals which did not have the time, expertise, resources and the expert staff to deal with the stroke patients. Moreover, the business model of the company works by helping the physicians at all the Partner’s affiliated institutions to determine that whether the patients were suffering from ischemic stroke and if so, whether the patients should be administered and revived through the use of the life saving drug called as the tissue plasminogen activator (tPA).
Stroke was among the third leading cause of death in the United States. The main business goal was to provide these telemedicine services to those hospitals that did not have the affordability to cover 24/7 stroke neurology coverage. The TeleStroke program had been developed in order to service those hospitals that ordinarily referred the patients to Brigham or MGH and currently, Dr. Schwamm did not have any plans to extend the services outside the Partner’s catchment area.
The pricing structure had also been developed by Schwamm and Farell based upon the various stroke rates in the different communities. Based upon the collected data, the estimated number of the patients with the symptoms of stroke, candidates requiring TeleStroke consultation and patients qualifying for tPA. Based on this a price of $ 10,000 had been set for the first 10 pre-paid TeleStroke consultations.
The whole TeleStroke program worked on the basis of the TeleStroke software and a full time software application specialist had also been hired to record the data about each of the consultation and operate the software. Over the time, this software had been upgraded to support the clinical reporting,decision support and the other functions. Two full time technical employees also supported the system in 2011 along with the other members of the team which included Farrell and other full time employees who handled the coordination, credentialing, information security engineering, IT and video imaging....................
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