Are you thinking about starting a Remote Second Opinion (RSO) program but don’t know where to begin?
Well, you’re not alone.
A lot goes into the planning and launch of a successful RSO program beyond just having expert physicians ready to give their second opinions. While it might seem like a daunting task to launch a remote second opinion program, it doesn’t have to be.
It may be appealing for a healthcare organization to consider writing their own enterprise medical software to specifically meet their unique needs. Commercial software is generally written to serve the more general demands of the healthcare industry and often doesn’t address the nuances of each particular organizations' operations. This makes it attractive to the in-house team to believe that it uniquely understands these peculiarities and dive head-first into the deep end to begin to code.
Transferring patients between hospitals is a common occurrence at community hospitals and tertiary care facilities. Although not enough is known about the burden this puts on our healthcare system, it has been estimated that 1.6 million inpatients originated at another facility,1 including 1.5% of all admitted Medicare patients.2 Despite the high volume of patient transfers, there is no structured way to ensure that the patients medical records arrive along with them to the receiving institution. This has posed significant, and even life threatening outcomes, but is there a solution?
Once you’ve received a breast cancer diagnosis, your first question will probably be “What are my options?” The second question might (and should) be: “Do you have a recommendation for a second opinion?”
It’s no surprise that the current global pandemic has accelerated telehealth’s adoption. More and more patients are looking to manage their care remotely and early indications point to the increased use of telehealth services being here to stay even after economies reopen. That said, you might find yourself asking, “which telehealth services should my organization be offering?”
It’s a fair question considering the various options that exist in the market but we hope to be able to provide some guidance below.
