3: Long Distance Medicine. Setting up a rural specialist tele-kidney care service from scratch – featuring Dr. Anurag Singh

In this episode we interview Dr. Anurag Singh, nephrologist and Medical Lead for the Northern Health Kidney Care program. Dr. Singh discusses the challenges he and his team face providing a regional kidney-care service across the massive geographical area of Northern BC, and how implementing a new telemedicine service improved care for patients in rural communities. In addition to improving access to care in rural communities, the tele-kidney care project achieved success in increasing the uptake of home dialysis to 22% (making it the highest in the province), and resulted in patients being referred for services earlier in their disease progression.  Access to tele-kidney care also resulted in savings of an average of $375 in travel expenses and eliminated 839 km of travel per patient ($300,000 and 863,883km total). Dr. Singh also reflects on the professional rewards of practicing medicine in Northern BC, and the personal satisfaction of living in a community so close to nature.


Additional Links:
BC Patient Safety Quality Council awards: Tele-Kidney care in Northern BC
NH Stories Tele-kidney care
Dr. Anurag Singh: Physician Highlight - How do we address the challenge of providing fair access to specialized services to patients in the remote communities of Northern BC?