Telemedicine: “virtual medical tourism”
Susan Helliwell, CEO
PRAXES Medical group
PRAXES Medical Group
Improve health care delivery while simultaneously reducing costs and risk.
PRAXES Clients
• Canadian Navy • Canadian Coast Guard • Mount Everest Climbing Teams • Offshore Oil & Gas • Remote medical clinics • Fishing fleets • Prisons • Emergency incident response – Swissair
disaster, White Juan blizzard • Search and Rescue teams
Providing integrated services for corporate and government clients (since 1997):
• Telemedicine by Emergency Physicians (EMdoc)
• Health Staffing services • Occupational Health services
Services
Telemedicine EMdoc • Canada’s premier telemedicine service
for industry • 24/7 access to a medical opinion &
management of injury/illness • 5 minute response guarantee • ISO 9001:2008 certified
OHdoc (in development) • Access to OH specialists
for help managing workplace health issues
• Get employees back to work quickly
Telemedicine as Medical Tourism?
• Medical tourism = receiving medical care in another jurisdiction.
• Telemedicine = “virtual” medical tourism. • We already provide this for industrial
clients – they get remote access to resources not available at their work location.
• Easily transferrable to the public health sector.
Occupational Health • 62% of Canadian adults work • Family doctors get a total of 6 hours of OH
training in their entire medical education. • Patients don’t care what makes them sick – they
just want to get better. • Employers will have to manage more health
issues for employees, as public system is unable to manage workplace health issues – this is a business issue.
What is OH? • Workplace health and safety audits • Health surveillance programs
– Make sure work environment is not making workers sick.
• Regulatory & non regulatory medical exams – Seafarers, diving, aviation, CAPP, etc.
• Fitness to work assessments • Health promotion programs
– flu shots a workplace – Healthy back programs
• Workplace Health staffing – e.g. RN on site.
• Immunizations • Travel health • Drug and alcohol testing
Quality management
How do we ensure we deliver quality services? • Hire staff with right medical qualifications • Ensure that staff have the right customer service
attitude • EMwerx software to manage schedules, provide
electronic medical records. • EMwerx software ensures compliance with
standards, measures response times.
EMwerx Software. • Software to manage:
– Remote Medical events + medical records
– Emergency events – Employee credentials
and training – Scheduling – Assets
Benefits to Customers Our clients have experienced: • Better on-site care and reduced costs of transporting
ill/injured workers offsite (e.g. vessel diversions, medevacs, ambulance transfers, etc).
• Greater workforce satisfaction with pro-active health and safety management
• Lower WCB premium costs due to: – Reduced Lost Time incidents & improved management of
injuries – Improved pre-work & return to work fitness assessments.
• Lower operating costs from electronic records management system
• Compliance with Canadian medical standards and credentials requirements.
Opportunities for Atlantic Canada
• Great health expertise here – Halifax is already a “Centre of excellence” for Atlantic Canada.
• Urbanization trend - opportunity to service rural patients using remote healthcare tools, such as telemedicine + use of alternate care providers.
• Oldest population in Canada – if we figure it out, we can export it!
Challenges • Need to spend more money on the other
11 determinants of health! • 13 jurisdictions – 13 colleges, 13 licenses
– we need a national telemedicine license to allow more interprovinical consultations.
• Need to get more doctors/health teams using technologies to serve patients in new ways
12 Determinants of Health 1. Income and Social
Status 2. Social Support
Networks 3. Education 4. Employment and
Working Conditions 5. Social Environments 6. Physical
Environments
7. Personal Health Practices and Coping Skills
8. Healthy Child Development
9. Biology and Genetic Endowment
10.Health Services 11.Gender 12.Culture
Testimonial
“….PRAXES has helped us be innovators in health and safety by
simultaneously improving our "at sea" medical support and
reducing injury costs. With their technology we have not only
reduced the number of expensive vessel diversions, we have
significantly improved our ranking with WCB and saved in
excess of $500,000 annually." Colin MacDonald, CEO,
Clearwater Fine Foods Inc.
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