Or Yehuda, Israel (November 19, 2020) — Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, has launched a telemedicine program that could reduce the number of patients requiring hospitalization by as much as a third.
Under what MDA is calling its Community Medicine Initiative, MDA paramedics and EMTs arriving to sick patients’ homes will use technology that will connect doctors from the patient’s HMO to the scene and enable them to examine the patient remotely to determine whether they can recuperate at home.
“Many of the patients currently in Israeli hospitals don’t necessarily need that level of care, but are brought there out of an abundance of caution because their conditions can’t be fully assessed outside of a hospital setting,” said Dr. Refael Strugo, medical director for Magen David Adom. “This program will bring a level of diagnostic testing more typically done in medical centers into patients’ homes to better determine whether hospitalization can be avoided.”
The program is being rolled out in the Yarkon and Sharon regions of Israel to patients of Kupat Cholim Macabbi, the second-largest of Israel’s four national HMOs. Other HMOs are expected to sign onto the program as it’s rolled out nationally in the weeks to come.
The Community Medicine Initiative is designed with several goals in mind, Dr. Strugo said.
Reduce the number of patients sent to hospital emergency rooms, especially now amid the pandemic, when hospitals are overburdened.Reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and enable many patients to convalesce at home.Reduce ambulance response times by tying up fewer vehicles at hospitals while patients await admission to emergency rooms.Reduce patients’ exposure to Covid and other hospital-borne illnesses.Decrease the number of seriously ill patients who refuse hospitalization and later deteriorate by putting a physician-ordered home-treatment plan in place to aid their recovery or by clearly showing to the patient, based on at-home medical tests, that it’s essential they be hospitalized.
Magen David Adom had been hoping to implement a telemedicine program for more several years, but the initiative was delayed by concerns about funding. However, given the program’s benefits, especially during the Covid pandemic, MDA and Israel’s Ministry of Health felt now would be the ideal time to launch the pilot program.
When Magen David Adom paramedics or EMTs arrive at the home of a Maccabi patient, they use digital technology to show the patient to physicians and share the patient’s vitals, including EKG, blood pressure, lung capacity, and blood-oxygen saturation levels. Doctors can also remotely examine the patient’s ears, nose, and throat. After the exam, MDA and the physician jointly assess whether the patient requires immediate hospitalization or can remain at home.
Magen David Adom has long advocated using telemedicine technology to improve patient treatment. For several months already, Magen David Adom has monitored Covid patients aboard its ambulances remotely, enabling patient vitals to be additionally scrutinized by paramedics at MDA’s National Operations Center in Kiryat Ono.
This additional monitoring has been instrumental in saving patients’ lives. Late last week, in three separate incidents, MDA was called to the homes of patients who were feeling vaguely ill and discovered they were suffering from the early, still-painless stages of heart attacks when paramedics at the National Operations Center viewing their EKGs remotely detected their unfolding medical crisis. All three patients are expected to recover, in part, because of the early intervention the remote monitoring afforded them.
Magen David Adom expects its home-based telemedicine program to have similarly beneficial outcomes.
“This is an initiative that will have great value to healthcare in Israel long after coronavirus is gone,” Dr. Strugo said. “It will reduce the cost of healthcare nationally; keep many patients at home, where they’re most comfortable recuperating; and ultimately provide better medical care for thousands of Israelis every year.”
