Telemedicine bridges the physician gap in tackling infectious disease
To help hospitals address a nationwide shortage of physicians specializing in infectious diseases, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) announced that it has formed a telemedicine-enabled company called Infectious Disease (ID) Connect. Backed by the world-class ID expertise of UPMC, the new company aims to improve outcomes while reducing transfers and keeping patients in their own communities for treatment.
“With the growing threat of drug-resistant organisms and costly government penalties for health care-associated infections, it has never been more critical for hospitals to properly diagnose, treat and prevent such infections,” said Rima Abdel-Massih, M.D., chief medical officer for ID Connect. “However, with ID specialists in short supply, many hospitals, especially smaller, community facilities, are struggling to meet this need. ID Connect was created to fill that gap.”
UPMC’s network of hospitals has been providing ID services to patients via telemedicine for the past five years, demonstrating that this service can reduce patient transfers to tertiary facilities, reduce healthcare-associated infections, improve patient outcomes and decrease antibiotic misuse. Likewise, national studies of interventions by infectious disease specialists have shown that they produce shorter hospital stays, reduce readmissions and lower patient mortality.
“Nationally, we see a compelling need for improved infectious disease care in hospitals,” said David Zynn, president of ID Connect, which is part of UPMC Enterprises, the health system’s innovation and commercialization arm. Healthcare-associated infections, he noted, affect 5 percent to 10 percent of patients and result in more than $40 billion annually in hospital costs. Up to half of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary, leading not only to higher costs but potentially to harmful side effects and growing antibiotic resistance.
ID Connect already serves 10 UPMC and five non-UPMC hospitals in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, and initially will focus on the more than 4,000 U.S. acute care hospitals with fewer than 300 beds. “These smaller facilities face an especially difficult time recruiting and retaining already scarce ID specialists,” said Abdel-Massih. “ID Connect can cost-effectively provide ID specialists, full-time or part-time, to augment existing staff.”
Initially, the new company will be staffed by UPMC ID physicians who will continue to serve the health system. But as ID Connect grows into new markets, it will be hiring additional physicians to provide patient consultations, as well as expertise in antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention and control, said Zynn. Longer-term, he expects the company to serve post-acute care patients at home following hospital discharge and international facilities.
