Case study: Expanding access to specialized health services
Telehealth drives development of a virtual health network in Québec
Providing specialized health services to people in remote regions is an ongoing challenge. The number of specialists and subspecialists is limited and the volume of practice outside major urban centres is insufficient to maintain skill levels. Academic health centres have traditionally provided consultation services to remote regions on a voluntary basis. In the province of Québec, this situation changed with the 2005 healthcare reform that created four integrated university healthcare networks (réseaux universitaires intégrés de santé or RUIS) and made each RUIS accountable by law for rendering specialized services accessible to everyone in its territory.
Johanne Desrochers, Associate Director of Telehealth at the MUHC, sees three ways to provide access to these services: “Either you move the patient to the professional in the urban centre,” she says “or you move the professional to the patient in the region, what we call outreach visits, or you provide services at a distance through telehealth.”
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