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Overview

The Nurse Managed Health Center (NMHC) at the University of Delaware is dedicated to patient health-care, offering treatments for episodic illnesses and injuries, occupational health, fitness and nutrition counseling, and chronic illness management. Located on the university campus, NMHC prides itself on delivering exceptional care by connecting patients with the most appropriate treatment providers.

Challenge

At NMHC, physicians and nurses understand that patients are working through three unique challenges: they are struggling with chronic illnesses, they don’t always know whom to connect with or where to go for treatment and they struggle with navigating the health-care system.

The University of Delaware wanted to find a way to o set these struggles by incorporating high quality telehealth so the school could provide patients and health care students with real-time education sessions with health-care professionals. By removing the burden of distance, video conferencing would enhance the expertise within the team and give NMHC direct access to specialists wherever they happened to be.

Solution

A fellow physician first recommended Lifesize after successfully conducting video consultations with Parkinson’s patients who were unable to physically travel to the o ice. NMHC saw Lifesize as an opportunity to enrich education services and the level of care the organization would be able to provide patients.

NMHC uses a combination of the Lifesize service and Lifesize HD video systems to connect with remote patients and specialists. The technology has enabled them to connect and engage in discussions with major physical therapy classrooms on campus by calling in to the anatomy lab and live streaming lessons and walkthroughs.

“Before video conferencing, we couldn’t provide adequate care for our 2,000+ Parkinson’s patients. To see specialists, they had to travel at least two hours to the nearest clinic, which isn’t ideal for someone with a movement disorder. Now with Lifesize, we’re able to partner with doctors at Rutgers University to learn about di erent methods of treatments.”

Dr. Allen Prettyman, Director at NMHC, University of Delaware

Outcome

With the ability to affordably and easily connect patients and providers across thousands of miles, video conferencing has drastically improved the lives of people whose ability to seek care is restricted by their location or the complexity of their conditions. By providing telehealth services, NMHC can now connect with specialists and other universities all over the world and students can learn from valuable real-life experiences.

New pilot programs have also been initiated to make use of the new video conferencing services. The university recently began reaching out to the local community to provide physical and mental health services to those in need.

“We recently opened a satellite office in a homeless service center where a nurse practitioner on the ground connects to a nurse practitioner here at the university. We are just stepping into the water, and we have great plans for it.“