Knowledge Knugget: Telemedicine Prenatal Care

Read the blog here.

Welcome to this week’s healthcare Knowledge Knugget! As a part of “The Executive Innovation Show” podcast, we’re bringing you the hot topics, questions we receive each week and game-changing ideas, best practices and tips. Today’s topic comes from Dr. Valentine Ugwu. He is going to talk about specific use cases of telemedicine in prenatal care.

Dr. Valentine Ugwu is an OBGYN -Full Fellow of American College of OBGYN’s (ACOG) and a Board-Certified Primary Care Physician. Also, he has a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). His health care experience spans about 23-years.

Listen and or watch the Knowledge Knugget above as Dr. Valentine Ugwu answers the following questions discussing the benefits of telemedicine for prenatal care:

How can telemedicine in prenatal care help rural areas to have more frequent visits with patients? 

Pregnancy should be a wonderful time for a mother and her unborn baby but can be challenging without the support and medical care needed as can be provided with prenatal care.

This becomes even more of a concern with the limited access to care that comes with the rural areas. It is no news that since 2010 to date, approximately 1 in 5 hospitals in rural communities across the country have closed due to limited funding, migrating population to urban areas amongst other issues. To get the access they must travel long distances in most circumstances. These issues of course impact this important population ”pregnant women” gravely as they are starved of care and become open to dire complications as their only options are showing up in the emergency room where most physicians are not trained to offer care to them and the only option is to have them “flown“ out of the facility.

Promoting telehealth will help ease these pressures as women can use their mobile devices to communicate with providers like myself for remote access to prenatal care.

Also teaching them to measure their weights, blood pressures, growth of their pregnancy with tape measurements, and listening to their baby’s heart using a device. 

Of course, this is only applicable to pregnancies considered low risk (which is most pregnancies). High-risk pregnancies and low-risk pregnancies determined to have eventual concerns on virtual visits will warrant physical evaluations.

You work servicing the border and surrounding areas as a physician, how much windshield time do you spend per week or month driving to locations? 

Given my passion for women’s health and rural medicine, I do work in the border environment and commit an average of 10-12 hours a week ensuring I travel to deliver care to my population. 

If an average telemedicine prenatal care appointment is 4 to 7 mins, describe the benefits as a physician being in one location seeing more patients. (Video relationship and patient convenience, not missing appointments, compliance). What is most beneficial in your mind?

In my opinion patient inconvenience (Lack of transport to nearest facilities or finances) is one of the most challenging reasons for patient’s noncompliance with prenatal care. So, to be able to bridge this gap with telehealth has unquantifiable benefits. It does also help the physician reduce burnout with travel and the hazards of long-distance traveling when not needed.

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