St. Vincent Opens Telehealth Clinics
One of the clinics is located at St. Vincent Anderson. (photo courtesy St. Vincent Health)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSt. Vincent Health is launching two telemedicine outreach clinics for its kidney transplant program. The clinics, located at St. Vincent Anderson and near the campus of St. Vincent Evansville, seek to provide more convenient access to transplant surgeons and specialists in underserved areas of the state.
Patients will be able to consult with the specialists for their pre-surgery tests and evaluations without having to leave their home communities. The service will be available to both donors and recipients.
St. Vincent says a team from the health system’s transplant center in Indianapolis will travel to the outreach clinics to consult with each patient in person. The patients will receive a full pre-surgical evaluation and on-site specialists will then conduct real-time teleconferencing with the kidney transplant team in Indy.
"The idea is to make transplant-related care more convenient and accessible for patients who live farther away and to make sure everyone is on the same page about each patient’s tailor-made treatment plan," said St. Vincent Abdominal Transplant Program Executive Director Mary Ann Palumbi. "Thanks to the telemedicine technology in our clinics, patients who live outside of our immediate coverage area can receive care closer to home and would only have to travel to Indianapolis for their transplant surgery and all initial post-transplant follow-up care."
St. Vincent also has kidney transplant screening clinics in Portage and Richmond. Chris Young, vice president of new virtual market development and incubations for St. Vincent parent Ascension, says the new clinics are part of a larger effort to make healthcare more accessible.