David McSwain, MD MPH

All children and adolescents deserve access to quality health care regardless of their race/ethnicity, health conditions, financial resources, or geographic location. Despite improvements over the past decades, severe disparities in the availability and access to high-quality health care for children and adolescents continue to exist throughout the United States. Economic and racial factors, geographic maldistribution of primary care pediatricians, and limited availability of pediatric medical… Show more

All children and adolescents deserve access to quality health care regardless of their race/ethnicity, health conditions, financial resources, or geographic location. Despite improvements over the past decades, severe disparities in the availability and access to high-quality health care for children and adolescents continue to exist throughout the United States. Economic and racial factors, geographic maldistribution of primary care pediatricians, and limited availability of pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists all contribute to inequitable access to pediatric care. Robust, comprehensive telehealth coverage is critical to improving pediatric access and quality of care and services, particularly for under-resourced populations. Show less

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented demand for health care at a distance, and telehealth (the delivery of patient care using telecommunications technology) became more widespread. Since our 2018 state-of-the-art review assessing the pediatric telehealth landscape, there have been many changes in technology, policy, payment, and physician and patient acceptance of this care model. Clinical best practices in telehealth, on the other hand, have remained… Show more

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented demand for health care at a distance, and telehealth (the delivery of patient care using telecommunications technology) became more widespread. Since our 2018 state-of-the-art review assessing the pediatric telehealth landscape, there have been many changes in technology, policy, payment, and physician and patient acceptance of this care model. Clinical best practices in telehealth, on the other hand, have remained unchanged during this time, with the primary difference being the need to implement them at scale. Because of the pandemic, underlying health system weaknesses that have previously challenged telehealth adoption (including inequitable access to care, unsustainable costs in a fee-for-service system, and a lack of quality metrics for novel care delivery modalities) were simultaneously exacerbated. Higher volume use has provided a new appreciation of how patients from underrepresented backgrounds can benefit from or be disadvantaged by the shift toward virtual care. Moving forward, it will be critical to assess which COVID-19 telehealth changes should remain in place or be developed further to ensure children have equitable access to high-quality care. With this review, we aim to (1) depict today's pediatric telehealth practice in an era of digital disruption; (2) describe the people, training, processes, and tools needed for its successful implementation and sustainability; (3) examine health equity implications; and (4) critically review current telehealth policy as well as future policy needs. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is continuing to develop policy, specific practice tips, training modules, checklists, and other detailed resources, which will be available later in 2021. Show less

Introduction: Healthcare is experiencing significant disruptive innovation with the use of technology, including telemedicine and virtual modalities to deliver care. These new models can dramatically improve access to care and reduce healthcare disparities for patients, especially in underserved and vulnerable populations like children. Problem: To assure diffusions and retention of new approaches they must be assessed for economic value. However, measuring telehealth programs using only an… Show more

Introduction: Healthcare is experiencing significant disruptive innovation with the use of technology, including telemedicine and virtual modalities to deliver care. These new models can dramatically improve access to care and reduce healthcare disparities for patients, especially in underserved and vulnerable populations like children. Problem: To assure diffusions and retention of new approaches they must be assessed for economic value. However, measuring telehealth programs using only an institutional financial viewpoint fails to convey all the societal value of such interventions, so economic studies of telehealth are needed but complex to design. Methods: We reviewed economic study guidelines, details from telehealth study research protocols, IRB submission questions, and telehealth study design literature. We then used an iterative consensus process to develop a framework for measuring value of virtual care at the societal level. Results: The work produced a set of tools that are useful for designing studies for measuring value of virtual care at the societal level. The framework and tools are presented in this report. Conclusion: The conceptual framework for economic evaluation was feasible for use when applied to measure pediatric telehealth value. Show less

Clinical trials are a fundamental tool in evaluating the safety and efficacy of new drugs, medical devices, and health system interventions. Clinical trial visits generally involve eligibility assessment, enrollment, intervention administration, data collection, and follow-up, with many of these steps performed during face-to-face visits between participants and the investigative team. Social distancing, which emerged as one of the mainstay strategies for reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, has… Show more

Clinical trials are a fundamental tool in evaluating the safety and efficacy of new drugs, medical devices, and health system interventions. Clinical trial visits generally involve eligibility assessment, enrollment, intervention administration, data collection, and follow-up, with many of these steps performed during face-to-face visits between participants and the investigative team. Social distancing, which emerged as one of the mainstay strategies for reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, has presented a challenge to the traditional model of clinical trial conduct, causing many research teams to halt all in-person contacts except for life-saving research. Nonetheless, clinical research has continued during the pandemic because study teams adapted quickly, turning to virtual visits and other similar methods to complete critical research activities. The purpose of this special communication is to document this rapid transition to virtual methodologies at Clinical and Translational Science Awards hubs and highlight important considerations for future development. Looking beyond the pandemic, we envision that a hybrid approach, which implements remote activities when feasible but also maintains in-person activities as necessary, will be adopted more widely for clinical trials. There will always be a need for in-person aspects of clinical research, but future study designs will need to incorporate remote capabilities. Show less

The growth and evolution of telehealth are opening new avenues for efficient, effective, and affordable pediatric health care services in the United States and around the world. However, there remain several barriers to the integration of telehealth into current practice. Establishing the necessary technical, administrative, and operational infrastructure can be challenging, and there is a relative lack of rigorous research data to demonstrate that telehealth is indeed delivering on its… Show more

The growth and evolution of telehealth are opening new avenues for efficient, effective, and affordable pediatric health care services in the United States and around the world. However, there remain several barriers to the integration of telehealth into current practice. Establishing the necessary technical, administrative, and operational infrastructure can be challenging, and there is a relative lack of rigorous research data to demonstrate that telehealth is indeed delivering on its promise. That being said, a knowledge of the current state of pediatric telehealth can overcome many of these barriers, and programs are beginning to collaborate through a new pediatric telehealth research network called Supporting Pediatric Research on Outcomes and Utilization of Telehealth (SPROUT). In this report, we provide an update on the landscape of pediatric telehealth and summarize the findings of a recent SPROUT study in which researchers assessed pediatric telehealth programs across the United States. There were >50 programs representing 30 states that provided data on their implementation barriers, staffing resources, operational processes, technology, and funding sources to establish a base understanding of pediatric telehealth infrastructure on a national level. Moving forward, the database created from the SPROUT study will also serve as a foundation on which multicenter studies will be developed and facilitated in an ongoing effort to firmly establish the value of telehealth in pediatric health care.

PMID 29487164 [ - as supplied by publisher] Show less

Pediatric critical care telemedicine consultation to community hospitals is feasible and results in a reduction in PICU admissions. This study demonstrates an improvement in provider-reported accuracy of patient assessment via telemedicine compared with telephone, which may produce a higher comfort level with transporting patients to a lower level of care. Pediatric critical care telemedicine consultations represent a promising means of improving care and reducing costs for critically ill… Show more

Pediatric critical care telemedicine consultation to community hospitals is feasible and results in a reduction in PICU admissions. This study demonstrates an improvement in provider-reported accuracy of patient assessment via telemedicine compared with telephone, which may produce a higher comfort level with transporting patients to a lower level of care. Pediatric critical care telemedicine consultations represent a promising means of improving care and reducing costs for critically ill children in rural areas. Show less

The Operating Procedures for Pediatric Telehealth provide guidance on the administrative, technical, and clinical issues surrounding the development of effective, efficient, patient and family-centered pediatric telehealth. You can find links to the full Operating Procedures on the AAP Section on Telehealth Care website at https://www.aap.org/…/Committees-Coun…/sotc/Pages/About.aspx and the American Telemedicine Association site at https://americantelemed.org.

Telemedicine is by no means a new technology, given that audio-video telecommunication links have been utilized for the provision of medical services since the 1950s. Nonetheless, telemedicine is currently in a phase of rapid growth and evolution. The combination of increasingly affordable and powerful networking, computing, and communication technology, along with the continued nationwide crisis in health care access and costs, has created a "tipping point," whereby telemedicine has progressed… Show more

Telemedicine is by no means a new technology, given that audio-video telecommunication links have been utilized for the provision of medical services since the 1950s. Nonetheless, telemedicine is currently in a phase of rapid growth and evolution. The combination of increasingly affordable and powerful networking, computing, and communication technology, along with the continued nationwide crisis in health care access and costs, has created a "tipping point," whereby telemedicine has progressed from a novel means of practicing medicine to practical tool to help address our nation's health care needs. Telemedicine has also evolved beyond a means of providing care to remote communities to becoming a versatile tool in the delivery of health care in a variety of non-rural settings. Although no one can be everywhere at once, telemedicine allows us to be in more places at once than we've ever been before. The problems of disparities and access to care are even more evident in pediatrics, where subspecialists are fewer in number and more regionalized than adult providers. Numerous successful telemedicine programs across the country have demonstrated the impact that these technologies can have in pediatrics, with many more programs in development. As a versatile means of delivering care, telemedicine can be used at any point during the course of a health care encounter as not only a means of expanding our reach, but also as a means of increasing efficiency. Using telemedicine to provide consultations to community hospitals has been shown to improve quality of care, strengthen the referral base for the consulting facilities, facilitate cost savings, and improve the financial bottom line for both referring and consulting facilities. This review highlights some of the ways in which telemedicine is being used to facilitate timely and effective pediatric care in a variety of hospital settings.

PMID 24512161 [Indexed for MEDLINE] Show less

BACKGROUND: End-tidal carbon dioxide (P(ETCO(2))) is a surrogate, noninvasive measurement of arterial carbon dioxide (P(aCO(2))), but the clinical applicability of P(ETCO(2)) in the intensive care unit remains unclear. Available research on the relationship between P(ETCO(2)) and P(aCO(2)) has not taken a detailed assessment of physiologic dead space into consideration. We hypothesized that P(ETCO(2)) would reliably predict P(aCO(2)) across all levels of physiologic dead space, provided that… Show more

BACKGROUND: End-tidal carbon dioxide (P(ETCO(2))) is a surrogate, noninvasive measurement of arterial carbon dioxide (P(aCO(2))), but the clinical applicability of P(ETCO(2)) in the intensive care unit remains unclear. Available research on the relationship between P(ETCO(2)) and P(aCO(2)) has not taken a detailed assessment of physiologic dead space into consideration. We hypothesized that P(ETCO(2)) would reliably predict P(aCO(2)) across all levels of physiologic dead space, provided that the expected P(ETCO(2))-P(aCO(2)) difference is considered.

METHODS: Fifty-six mechanically ventilated pediatric patients (0-17 y old, mean weight 19.5 +/- 24.5 kg) were monitored with volumetric capnography. For every arterial blood gas measurement during routine care, we measured P(ETCO(2)) and calculated the ratio of dead space to tidal volume (V(D)/V(T)). We assessed the P(ETCO(2))-P(aCO(2)) relationship with Pearson's correlation coefficient, in 4 V(D)/V(T) ranges.

RESULTS: V(D)/V(T) was <or= 0.40 for 125 measurements (25%), 0.41-0.55 for 160 measurements (32%), 0.56-0.70 for 154 measurements (31%), and >0.7 for 54 measurements (11%). The correlation coefficients between P(ETCO(2)) and P(aCO(2)) were 0.95 (mean difference 0.3 +/- 2.1 mm Hg) for V(D)/V(T) <or= 0.40, 0.88 (mean difference 5.9 +/- 4.3 mm Hg) for V(D)/V(T) 0.41-0.55, 0.86 (mean difference 13.6 +/- 5.2 mm Hg) for V(D)/V(T) 0.56-0.70, and 0.78 (mean difference 17.8 +/- 6.7 mm Hg) for V(D)/V(T) >0.7.

CONCLUSIONS: There were strong correlations between P(ETCO(2)) and P(aCO(2)) in all the V(D)/V(T) ranges. The P(ETCO(2))-P(aCO(2)) difference increased predictably with increasing V(D)/V(T). Show less