MB Telehealth Dauphin Site: Growth and Increased Activity Meeting Patient Needs

By: Lynn Henry,
Regional Telehealth Coordinator
Spring 2005

Telehealth at the Dauphin site is nothing short of exciting! There has been a large increase in activity at this telehealth site with an ever-growing list of clinical applications, including consultations with specialist providers, increased attendance at educational sessions by public and health professionals and use of the link for administrative meetings.

This increase has prompted the Dauphin Hospital Foundation to purchase a second piece of equipment to complement the already highly used Tandberg HSCII cart now in the facility. As more people become aware of this alternative form of access to health-care providers and services, requests for a telehealth consultation continue to increase. With two pieces of equipment at the Dauphin site, two sessions could run concurrently allowing more access to sessions.

Much of the increased clinical activity results from the Dauphin specialists providing consultative services to patients in the Ashern, Swan River and Russell areas.           Dr. Pieter Willemse initially began this service following a request from a patient. His willingness to try new technology in health services delivery was quickly followed by the development of a pre-op anesthesiology clinic serviced by the local anesthesiologists. Dr. A. Wiens, Dr. M. Van Alystyne and Dr. J. Scott soon discovered for themselves the benefits to this service. One patient was quoted as saying: “Thank you Dr. Wiens, you just saved me a tank of gas and four hours on the highway!”

Pre-Op Anesthesiology clinics are now running weekly on Monday with patients in Ashern, Russell and Swan River. Pre-Op nurses are also in preliminary discussions to developing their own service delivery process for the same outlying areas. The end result would be that patients would then only have to travel for the surgery itself, a saving of three round trips to Dauphin!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Oncology has also quickly become a well-serviced specialty on the link. Chemotherapy nurses are instrumental in providing up-dated test results and patient progress reports to the oncologists at CancerCare Manitoba.  When requested, they remain with the patient during telehealth visits with the oncologist and can give many patients reassurance while reinforcing correct information given by the doctor.

As with all other MBTelehealth sites in Manitoba, integration of telehealth is the key to its long-term sustainability and integration at the Dauphin site is quite remarkable. As more people and key participants are willing to learn how to use the equipment for administrative or educational purposes, they too see how valuable this service is to the region. Parkland Regional Health Authority (PRHA) has two sites within the region with one in Swan River and the second in Dauphin. This allows for intra-regional administrative, management and clinical activity. Through the Telehealth working group, the PRHA is in the process of completing a needs assessment for possible future development of telehealth sites. This would ensure access to telehealth in all four districts within the region, further increasing the reduction in the amount of travel, administrative and management time, and cost.