Health information technology - a powerful combination of medical expertise, computers and high-speed internet called telehealth - has the potential to transform health care, simultaneously enabling better patient outcomes and lower costs. Several recent developments are helping to turn this potential into reality.
As a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, I am particularly interested in the improvements telehealth can bring to health care for our seniors. In April, our Committee conducted a hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's proposed National Broadband Plan and on ways to bring the power of telehealth into the home.
The FCC found that the increased use of electronic health records and remote patient monitoring could reduce health care costs by more than $700 billion over the next 15 to 25 years. In addition to significant cost savings, these technologies can improve seniors' quality of life dramatically by allowing them to "age in place" in the comfort and security of their homes.
A recent study of remote patient monitoring by the Veterans Administration found a 19 percent reduction in hospital admissions, a 25 percent reduction in days of bed care, and an 86 percent patient satisfaction rate. Moreover, the average cost of providing home monitoring per patient was $1,600 per year, as compared to more than $77,000 for nursing home care.
As I travel throughout our state, I hear again and again from our seniors how much they want to remain at home for as long as their health permits. Remote patient monitoring, with the home linked to health care providers via broadband, makes that possible.
That is why I have co-sponsored the Fostering Independence Through Technology - or FITT - Act. This bipartisan legislation would establish pilot projects for home health agencies to use home monitoring and communications technologies to enhance positive health outcomes for Medicare patients. In addition, I joined my Senate colleagues in signing a letter to the head of the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation urging that remote telehealth monitoring be included in the Center's demonstration projects to create ways to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The use of technology to remotely monitor a person's basic health vital signs, such as heart rate and blood pressure, provides the flexibility, comfort, and convenience of remaining at home. Remote monitoring can be used 24 hours a day, seven days per week, helping to avert unnecessary and costly hospitalizations.
Telehealth is especially important in rural states, like Maine, which have serious shortages of both primary care and specialty physicians, and where patients of all ages often have to travel long distances to receive health care services.
Maine has long been at the forefront of developing telehealth initiatives. In 2007, health care providers throughout our region joined together to form the New England Telehealth Consortium. Two years ago, I supported a $24.6 million FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Program grant to assist the Consortium in developing a state-of-the art broadband network that will connect an astonishing 555 health care sites across Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, speeding the sharing of medical records, and enabling remote diagnostics and surgery, dentistry, and behavioral health treatment.
This progress continued last month, when I joined Senator Snowe to announce that Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems had been awarded a $12.7 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services' Beacon Community Program to build and strengthen its health information technology infrastructure. EMHS was one of just 15 organizations to receive funding through this program, which will serve as a model for the nation.
EMHS has long set the gold standard with its efforts to modernize health information technology systems, streamlining information, and expanding health care options for patients in rural areas of our state. This new project will be especially helpful in connecting rural hospitals and health care providers with technology and other resources they otherwise could not access or afford.
Medical advancements create new medicines, new diagnostic tools, and new procedures that save lives. With the expansion of telehealth initiatives, these advancements can be available to all, so that "rural" no longer means "remote," and so that our seniors can receive the health care they need while remaining in their homes.