Palliative care centres join Telemedicine
OutCare charity funds video linkups for 12 Eastern Ontario facilities
Twelve palliative care facilities across Eastern Ontario are joining the province’s telemedicine network in an effort to improve patient care and better educate doctors, nurses and volunteers.
“We’re able to, through this project, link the different hospices and palliative care programs in the community, in the smaller towns, in the smaller regions, to the big hospitals right around the city,” said Dr. José Pereira, medical chief of palliative care at The Ottawa Hospital and Bruyère Continuing Care as well as the medical lead for the Champlain Regional Hospice Palliative Care Program.
High-definition video conferencing equipment now installed at palliative care sites in Kemptville, Cornwall, Hawkesbury, Renfrew and Ottawa enables staff to access the Ontario Telemedicine Network. A secure network, OTN is used by more than 1,600 health-care providers in the province.
Implementing the network at the new sites cost about $380,000. The OutCare Foundation, a charity devoted to raising money for palliative care across Eastern Ontario, undertook a campaign to raise the money. On Thursday, the foundation offered a first look at the technology, now running at the May Court Hospice in the Glebe.
With the link to OTN, patients will be able to stay close to home while still accessing specialist-level advice generally limited to bigger cities, said Pereira.
Demonstrating the new link, Hospice Renfrew’s executive director Diane Caughey said keeping patients close to their families and support systems is important but hard to do in rural areas. Linking to OTN while caring for clients across Renfrew County, which is similar in size to Prince Edward Island, helps her plug holes in the care available at the hospice.
“The one thing that keeps patients in Renfrew and close to home for their care is the fact that we can access tertiary care and resources to enable that,” said Caughey.
Staff will also be able to participate in training programs, such as a weekly medical-journal club run at Bruyère to discuss the most recent palliative research.
Education is important, said Pereira, because many people still believe a palliative patient is in the last few days or weeks of life. This interpretation, he said, is absolutely wrong.
“Many patients have illnesses that are progressive and not curable, but their life expectancy is still many months and sometimes even years. They’re not benefiting from the expertise that palliative care can bring in terms of symptom management, and so they suffer for months and months and even longer with symptoms that can be controlled, with fear that can be alleviated, with sadness and anxiety that can be addressed, because people still think, ‘Oh, we’re not going to refer them to palliative because that’s only at the very end.’”
The number of patients admitted to palliative care is increasing because of a growing aging population, said Pereira.
Incorporating palliative care alongside treatments to control diseases makes patients less anxious and less depressed, gives them a better quality of life and, studies show, helps them live longer, said Pereira.
“I think it’s important to start rethinking our concept of palliative. Part of this telemedicine and a rise in education is to get that message out and further our field.”