News

DATE: September 9, 2020

BAMBERG, SC—Palmetto Care Connections (PCC) Chief Executive Officer Kathy Schwarting announces that Chief Executive Officer of CareSouth Carolina, Ann Lewis and retired Director of SC Department of Mental Health John H. Magill have joined the PCC Board of Directors.

“Ann Lewis is a pioneer in her field. She has shepherded growth over the past 30 years addressing health care needs of the Pee Dee community. CareSouth Carolina now serves more than 38,000 patients and staffs over 500 employees in ten rural communities,” said Schwarting. “CareSouth Carolina has been an early provider of telehealth services in rural communities, and PCC is fortunate to have Ann’s knowledge and expertise on the board.”

Lewis has served as the Chair of the Greater Pee Dee Champion Community and on the Hartsville Rotary Club; the Coker College Board of Visitors; Darlington County Communities in Schools; Pee Dee Area Health Education Consortium; Pee Dee Alzheimer’s Association; the Children’s AIDS fund, Northeastern Rural Health Network, and many other groups.

Through CareSouth Carolina, she provides volunteer support to the American Cancer Society; American Heart Association; local chambers of commerce; downtown development associations; local agri-tourism; and was awarded the 2004 South Carolina Ambassador for Economic Development by South Carolina Commerce and the Governor, as well as numerous Volunteer of the Year awards by the organization.

On a state and national level, Lewis is the founding president of the South Carolina Rural Health Association and a former president of the South Carolina Primary Health Care Association. The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) presented Ann with the 2012 John Gilbert Award, which recognizes longstanding excellence and leadership in community health. She received The Champion Award presented by the South Carolina Primary Healthcare Association in 2017 for her “extraordinary leadership, commitment and dedication to the vision and mission of community health centers.”

“PCC also welcomes John H. Magill to the board of directors,” said Schwarting. “PCC has had a long-standing partnership with SCDMH, and Mr. Magill has been an advocate of PCC’s work and a champion of telehealth for many years. After his extraordinary career in mental health, PCC is honored and privileged to have him as a board member.”

Magill retired as the SC Department of Mental Health State Director in January 2019, a position he held for 12 years. He is currently the longest serving public mental health director in the United States.

Magill began his career with the Department at the former South Carolina State Hospital in the 1960s. During his career, he served as the state of Georgia’s director for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, he was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fenwick Hall Hospital on Johns Island, South Carolina, and he also served as a deputy chair and Professor of Psychiatry in the Medical University of South Carolina’s Department of Psychiatry.

Magill received the Governor’s Award: The Order of the Palmetto in 2011 in recognition of his service to the citizens of South Carolina and contributions to behavioral health care. In October of 2011, the University of South Carolina’s School of Medicine honored Magill with the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his ongoing commitment to the School, where he remains a clinical professor of Psychiatry.

Under his leadership, SCDMH launched its nationally acclaimed Emergency Department Telepsychiatry program, which was developed to meet the critical shortage of psychiatrists in South Carolina’s underserved areas and assist hospital emergency rooms by providing appropriate treatment to persons in a psychiatric crisis. The program employs state-of-the-art telehealth technology to connect SCDMH psychiatrists to hospital emergency departments throughout the State.

Built on the success of its telepsychiatry services to emergency departments, SCDMH equipped its hospitals, mental health centers, and clinics to provide psychiatric treatment services to its patients via telepsychiatry. From 2013 – 2020, the Telepsychiatry Program has provided more than 223,000 psychiatric treatment services to SCDMH patients throughout South Carolina. SCDMH is the largest provider of telehealth services in the state.

Established in 2010, PCC is a non-profit organization that provides technology, broadband, and telehealth support services to health care providers in rural and underserved areas in S.C. PCC leads the S.C. Broadband Consortium which facilitates broadband connections for health care providers throughout the
state. PCC co-chairs the South Carolina Telehealth Alliance, along with the Medical University of South Carolina, partnering with health care organizations and providers to improve health care access and delivery for all South Carolinians.

COLUMBIA — South Carolina will soon use TV signals to enable students without high-speed internet to get and complete their virtual assignments at home, officials announced Wednesday.

The pilot program launching next month will benefit about 5,000 students in three districts: Fairfield and Jasper counties and York 1.

“We’re taking the schoolhouse to the child,” Gov. Henry McMaster said at a joint announcement with state Superintendent Molly Spearman and South Carolina Educational Television officials.

COVID-19

SC students will get Wi-Fi hot spots in time for school’s start, but gaps will remain

• By Seanna Adcox and Adam Benson [email protected] [email protected]

The technology, called datacasting, will use the state’s public airwaves to transmit encrypted data to the computers of students who either didn’t qualify for taxpayer-paid mobile hot spots or live in an area where the cellphone signal is too weak for the Wi-Fi device to do much good.

Nearly 89,000 of those hot spots, bought with federal coronavirus aid, went to households of K-12 students poor enough to qualify. By Tuesday, all 81 of South Carolina’s school districts had started the school year, mostly with a mix of in-person and online learning. But how many students statewide still lack the ability to access their schoolwork at home remains unclear.

Officials call the SCETV transmissions another short-term solution in bridging South Carolina’s digital divide until broadband is extended to every community.

“This is a piece of the puzzle that’s vital at this particular time,” said Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Walhalla.

By Joseph Bustos
September 08, 2020 05:00 AM , Updated September 08, 2020 09:25 AM

More than $50 million worth of broadband expansion projects will start this month in 23 counties around the state to help close the internet service gap exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shovel-ready projects are being made possible, in part, with funding from the CARES Act, federal coronavirus aid that must be spent by the end of the year. The dollars will help internet providers expand service to areas where it may take longer to turn a profit.

As of Thursday, the Office of Regulatory Staff, a state agency tasked with providing internet connections to needy state residents during the pandemic, has approved 71 projects to expand broadband in 23 counties, including Orangeburg, Lancaster, Lexington and Fairfield counties. The agency will reimburse broadband companies 50% of the project costs, said Nanette Edwards the director of ORS.

“What they’ve done is they’ve tried to pick up areas where they knew they could do it quickly. I think that’s why you see it dispersed,” Edwards said.

The broadband projects are a good start, but also a drop in the bucket toward closing the state’s broadband access gap. There are 650,000 South Carolinians and 180,000 households in the state without high-speed internet access. One broadband expert in the state says it would cost $800 million to connect the rest of the households in the state without broadband access.
The Buzz on SC Politics

ORS expects contractors to begin the small expansion projects this month and complete them before the end of the year, before the Dec. 31 deadline for spending CARES Act money.

And ORS did not have the number of households that are expected to have broadband access immediately available after the projects are complete.

The agency is working to create a broadband map to determine its own estimate of what it would take to completely build out broadband in the state, but acknowledged that the money being spent now is small.

“I think it’s really hard to give it a concrete number to say this is what it’s really going to cost to do a complete build out of the state of South Carolina to every structure that’s capable of having internet,” Edwards said.

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article245472045.html#storylink=cpy

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued a proposed rule that aims to allow Medicare coverage for “breakthrough devices,” giving providers and patients access to cutting-edge telemedicine and mHealth tools.

August 31, 2020 – Federal officials are proposing to expand Medicare coverage for new telemedicine and mHealth technologies classified as “breakthrough medical devices.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a proposed rule this week that aims to cut the lengthy review process for what are considered cutting-edge devices, giving Medicare beneficiaries and their care providers the freedom to use the technology while the US Food and Drug Administration reviews the products for long-term approval.

“For new technologies, CMS coverage approval has been a chicken and egg issue,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a press release. “Innovators had to prove their technologies were appropriate for seniors, but that was almost impossible since the technology was not yet covered by Medicare and thus widely used enough to demonstrate their suitability for Medicare beneficiaries. These efforts will ensure seniors get access to the latest technologies while lowering costs for innovators.”

The proposed rule could prompt healthcare providers to invest more time and energy in telehealth and remote patient monitoring programs that make use of the new technology to improve patient care in the home setting, particularly for those living with chronic diseases.

The proposed Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology (MCIT) pathway would allow Medicare coverage for FDA-designated breakthrough devices on the same day that the FDA provides market authorization – which occurs after 510(k) premarket notification, De Novo request or premarket approval application – for those devices. The coverage would last for four years, after which the FDA would review the technology.

READ MORE: Texas Hospital Using mHealth Wearables to Monitor Cardiac Patients at Home

The order also covers breakthrough devices classified for two years prior to the date this rule becomes effective.

“A breakthrough device must provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of a life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating human disease or condition and must also meet at least one part of a second criterion, such as by being a ‘breakthrough technology’ or offering a treatment option when no other cleared or approved alternatives exist,” CMS said in an accompanying fact sheet. “For beneficiaries impacted by these diseases, MCIT will provide assurance that they will have access to the latest breakthrough medical devices to treat their condition, provided the devices have a Medicare benefit category.”

“We believe 4 years of Medicare coverage will encourage manufacturers to voluntarily develop evidence to show these treatments improve the health of Medicare patients,” the agency added. “This time period for coverage would allow clinical studies with Medicare patients to be completed while providing broad immediate access and fostering innovation.  When MCIT coverage sunsets, manufacturers would have all current coverage options available such as a National Coverage Determination (NCD), one or more Local Coverage Determinations (LCD), and claim by claim decisions.”

The rule would also clarify how CMS covers new telemedicine and mHealth technology, by codifying the definition of “reasonable and necessary” for the Medicare population. Under the proposed definition the device must be (1) safe and effective, (2) not experimental or investigational, and (3) appropriate for use by Medicare patients.

Officials said the new rule might encourage connected health companies to develop clinical studies with providers and Medicare patients to prove the long-term value of their products prior to the end of the four-year period.

READ MORE: University of Memphis Launches NIH-Funded mHealth Research Center

Public comments on the proposed rule will be accepted through November 2.

The proposal drew positive support from The Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), a Washington DC-based trade association.

“In order to incentivize innovative medical breakthroughs, the federal government must ensure those breakthrough technologies are covered by Medicare,” AdvaMed President and CEO Scott Whitaker said in a press release. “We are pleased that this proposed rule gets us closer to this goal as it would help ensure the patients who need these innovative technologies have access to them.”

“CMS’ proposal complements provisions in several recent Medicare rules that have enhanced new technology add-on payments (NTAP) and transitional pass through (TPT) payments for FDA-designated breakthrough technologies,” added  John Liddicoat, MD, executive vice president and president of the Americas Region for Medtronic, an AdvaMed member and developer of mHealth tools and platforms for people living with diabetes. “While we are still reviewing the proposed rules to understand their full impact, it appears that combined, these rules will go a long way toward modernizing payment and coverage of transformational medical technologies, incentivizing innovation, and most importantly, improving patient care by ensuring Medicare beneficiary access to these new therapies.”

An initiative launched by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2015 is set to unveil a set of standards aimed at measuring the effectiveness of pediatric telehealth programs across the country.

August 27, 2020 – A program launched in 2015 to study pediatric telehealth services has unveiled a set of standards aimed at improving hospital programs across the country.

The Supporting Pediatric Research on Outcomes and Utilization of Telehealth (SPROUT) program, developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), is set to publish a paper in Pediatrics that lays out the guidelines for analyzing the effectiveness of pediatric telehealth programs.

The article was made available for prepublication release due to urgency of evaluating connected health programs in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen telehealth use skyrocket. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) for example, saw daily telehealth visits jump from as many as 10 to more than 1,500, while the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago trained more than 800 providers in just a few weeks to handle the surge.

“Now is a critical opportunity to systematically evaluate telehealth care delivery, identify patient cohorts who can benefit, and explore ways to incorporate telehealth into patient care workflows,” the article, authored by John Chuo, MD, MS, IA, and Scott Lorch, MD, MSCE, of CHOP and the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Michelle Macy, MD, MS, of Northwestern University, states. “This knowledge will evolve our healthcare system to improve how care is delivered now and during crises.”

“While a few measurement standards exist to guide the assessment of telehealth’s impact on care delivered, current literature lacks a unified approach to evaluate telehealth in pediatric healthcare delivery,” Chuo and his colleagues note.

The article lays out a guide to telehealth evaluation called the STEM (SPROUT Telehealth Evaluation and Measurement) profile, which pulls together concepts developed by the National Quality Forum (NQF), World Health Organization (WHO) and Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ). From that work, the STEM profile outlines four measurement domains: health outcomes; health delivery – quality and cost; experience; and program implementation and key performance indicators.

“Findings from rigorous telehealth program evaluation in these areas can inform data driven reimbursement and policy changes that encourages appropriate telehealth use, especially amidst the explosion of telehealth services associated with the COVID pandemic,” the paper concludes.

The STEM profile comes out of a 2019 initiative by SPROUT to create a national database for pediatric telehealth research and best practices. Spearheaded by the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), one of two federally recognized telehealth centers of excellence and funded by a $3.6 million federal grant, the initiative aims to support “the development of telehealth research efforts, metric development, identification of best practices and the development of collaborative policy and advocacy materials” specific to pediatric programs.

“This is a huge step forward in the development of safe and impactful telehealth programs across the country,” S. David McSwain, MD, a physician with MUSC Children’s Health, associate professor of pediatric critical care and chief medical information officer who helped develop the program, said at the time. “Academic research into the real impact of telehealth services is a critical component of developing and growing programs with the greatest potential to improve our health care system. Many physicians and other health care providers are hesitant about incorporating telehealth into their practices because it’s difficult to separate the theoretical benefits from the real value.”

“Research into the real impact of telehealth services is a critical part of developing and growing programs with the greatest potential to improve our health care system,” he added. “Many doctors and other health care providers are hesitant about incorporating telehealth into their practices because it’s difficult to separate the theoretical benefits from the real value.”

Faced with the need to improve patient satisfaction and reduce unnecessary delays in care, hospitals and medical practices are using telehealth and mHealth tools to create a virtual waiting room.

August 26, 2020 – With the COVID-19 crisis putting the kibosh on crowds, hospitals are turning to telehealth and mHealth to take the wait out of healthcare.

The crowded, clamorous, stuffy, sniffly waiting room has long been the scourge of healthcare, a sign of both inconvenienced patients and overworked providers. It’s here that patients are asked to announce their presence, fill out forms and check their insurance, while staff sort through the data to match them to the right provider at the right time slot.

Prodded by the pandemic, health systems are now using mHealth apps, online portals and telehealth platforms to handle those administrative tasks, so that a patient arriving at the hospital or doctor’s office is seen and treated as quickly as possible.

“When you think of healthcare from the perspective of a claim, there’s a lot of hands touching the data,” says Jay Roszhart, MHA, FACHE, president of the Memorial Health System Ambulatory Group, rolling off a list of services that includes scheduling, registration, check-in, insurance verification, coding, billing and appointment reminders – all potentially handled by a different person or department. “That’s just an incredible number of hands in the pot.”

To improve that process, the Illinois-based health system recently launched a virtual waiting room, complete with AI-powered chatbots that help both patient and provider collect and sort all that data before the patient sets foot in a doctor’s office.

READ MORE: Hospitals Use mHealth to Keep Family In The Loop on Patient Care

“When you’re dealing with (a pandemic), one of the things you realize very quickly is that you have these waiting rooms where people congregate … and fill out forms,” Roszhart says. “That really is not the ideal experience and it certainly isn’t a safe experience.”

Roszhart says a connected health platform that encompasses several tools – including chatbots, apps and portals – “takes away the mundane and repeatable tasks” that dominate the waiting room and delay care, not to mention taking time away from doctors and nurses who’d rather be dealing with patients than dealing with paperwork.

“And you’re making the experience much more pleasant for the patient,” he adds.

Memorial Health is partnering with California-based LifeLink on the telehealth platform, which uses chatbots to guide the conversation between patient and doctor’s office. LifeLink is one of dozens of companies in the space, offering virtual services to health systems, hospitals, clinics, practices and doctor’s offices looking to digitize all the tasks that take place before the actual doctor-patient encounter.

The opportunities are numerous. A medical practice or clinic that can push these services online enables patients to check in virtually and arrive at the exact time that they’re scheduled to meet with a doctor, with all the clinical and insurance information automatically added to the medical record. A hospital or urgent care clinic, meanwhile, can use the platform to speed up care coordination, making sure the right doctors are in place to treat patients coming through the ER.

READ MORE: Potential for Healthcare Kiosks in Improving Care Delivery

These services have come under the spotlight during the COVID-19 crisis, when many hospitals have restricted access to their ERs and smaller clinics and practices have closed their waiting rooms. Faced with the need to diagnose and treat patients with the minimum of in-person interaction, they’re using telehealth and mHealth tools to triage patients outside the hospital, even in the home.

On the back end, these platforms need to be interoperable, so that the right information is connected to the right patient at the point of care. On the front end, the technology needs to be easy to use, intuitive and friendly, so that the patient feels welcome.

“You have to design this to give patients a pleasant experience,” says Roszhart.

He says Memorial Health chose a chatbot with the idea of making the process more human, “with the development of a conversation that doesn’t sound like you’re talking to a robot.” The platform must also integrate with other services at key points in the conversation to enter data and kick back to a live person when help is needed.

While the health system is still working to get the platform up and running, Roszhart says success will be measured by patient engagement – how many complete the process, where do people drop out and ask for help, how they feel about the process – and cost savings. And while that latter metric might refer to the fewer number of staff needed to handle these administrative duties, he sees this as an opportunity to train them in other departments.

READ MORE: Nemours Uses an mHealth Chatbot to Help Kids Manage Their Weight

Would a virtual waiting room, then, eliminate the need for the physical waiting room?

That may be the goal, Roszhart says, but it’s a long ways off.

“Healthcare’s insistence on maintaining the status quo … has really hurt our ability to modernize our practice,” he points out. In addition, there will always be a percentage of the population that prefers, out of habit or familiarity, to avoid technology and sit in a waiting room.

For the time being, Memorial Health has a waiting room concept that caters to every whim. Those who prefer to do everything online will be able to do so, while others can request to have their documents e-mailed or mailed to them, or even brought out to their car in the parking lot.

Eventually, Roszhart envisions a waiting room much more inviting than the typical room with old furniture and magazines and the occasional fish tank and water cooler. He sees a space offering health and wellness resources and personalized care experiences.

“I see the physical space of a primary care office being entirely different,” he says.