Project: Telehealth Saskatchewan

Canada Health Infostructure Partnerships Program

Synopsis

The foundation of Telehealth Saskatchewan was formed in 1999 with the establishment of the province's first telehealth project, the Northern Telehealth Network (NTN). Building on successes and lessons learned, the program expanded to include a greater variety of services to be directed to a wider population. The objectives of Telehealth Saskatchewan were to:

• Improve access to health services and providers.
• Enhance rural practice support.
• Encourage optimal use of specialists.
• Provide continuing education and health information and education to patients and the public.
• Support provincial or regional service and education networks.

Outcomes and Impacts

It is estimated, based on utilization to the end of December 2003, that the annual telecommunications cost savings will have been about $150,000 and the incremental quality of service costs incurred by HISC will be about $70,000. There has been a significant impact on the body of knowledge related to video conferencing over IP. Much of the proof of concept work carried out during the project to support TS, will be 100% transferable to other video conferencing projects to be undertaken by HISC and the College of Medicine.

A second major impact is on the number of sites. The contribution agreement called for the establishment of five new sites. Six new sites were added to TS during the project. Some of these sites have also established regional telehealth planning committees to facilitate the introduction and expansion of telehealth to their region.

A third major impact was the body of knowledge acquired during the upgrading of existing xray scanners and the upgrading of Saskatoon Health Region's LAN and RIS to support the transmission of x-rays from rural site to urban centres such as Saskatoon and Regina. In addition, there has been an increase in the number of clinical consultations, the number of clinicians participating in the program and in the number of education sessions and participants.

Additional outcomes were also noted:

• A number of out of province sites now participate in TS education seminars; conversely, Saskatchewan Health care providers are able to participate in many out of province education sessions that are not available in Saskatchewan.
• Staff at the KCC put on traveling clinics in many rural areas.
• University of Saskatchewan researchers studying memory loss secured CIHR funding under the New Emerging Team (NET) Program for their use of telehealth as a cost effective method of evaluating patients from all parts of Saskatchewan.

Impact -- Human Resources

The CHIPP project has had an impact on human resources.

• Five new half time positions and two full time positions have been developed. These positions are considered permanent and will be funded by Saskatchewan Health after the completion of the project. During the project, the site coordinator's positions were formally evaluated by Saskatchewan Joint Job Evaluation process and established as positions within the scope of the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan;
• The project confirmed earlier findings that sites require the presence of site coordinators if they are to achieve maximum benefit;
• All of the current and past site coordinators have acquired new IT and management skills;
• There has been an increase in activity levels at all rural sites with no increase in staffing. This implies increased productivity. While there has been a high level of enthusiasm for telehealth from all site coordinators, there is however a need to address a number of policy issues through a strategic planning initiative or there is a high risk that the site coordinators will feel a lack of a sense of direction for the telehealth program.

The Future

In 2002, Saskatchewan announced it's Action Plan for Health Care and this is the government's strategic plan for the delivery of health services. The action plan includes the use of telehealth to link the province's hospitals including: provincial (5), regional (6), district (9) and northern hospital (4) for a total network of 24 hospitals. There are two northern nursing station sites from the initial pilot project and TS will continue to support them. During the last Provincial Election, one of the government's commitments was to expand the number of sites to 26.

Saskatchewan and Alberta are currently engaged in discussion regarding schedulers that will meet both their business and technical needs. Alberta has also had discussions with Manitoba on this issue. Alberta has a superb "front end" scheduler and TS has purchased the software/hardware and a license from Forgent for their Media Manager, a scheduler. Saskatchewan and Alberta are going to try to integrate the software from the two systems but may require additional funding.

Documents and Products Generated

Document/ Product Name	Available in Paper and/or Electronic Form	License Fee Required for use (Yes/No)	Previously Provided to Health Canada (Yes/No)
Policy and Procedure Manual	Paper	No	No
Template for software upgrade testing	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Proposal for Upgrading x-ray scanners Task #7	Paper and Electronic	No	No
User Guide Radiology Scanners Task #7	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Template for vendor RFP Task #9	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Template for vendor Reference Checks Task #9	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Template for vendor Presentations Task #9	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Template for vendor Demonstrations Task #9	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Video Conferencing Design Evaluation and Testing Task #10	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Requirements and Proof of Concept CommunityNet Task #10	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Template for Region's LAN Redesign Task #10	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Telehealth Scheduler Requirements Task #10	Paper and Electronic	No	No
CommunityNet Security Task #10	Paper and Electronic	No	No
New Telehealth Saskatchewan Website content	Paper	No	No
Job Description Network Operations Manger	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Job DescriptionSite Coordinator	Paper and Electronic	No	No
Clinical Training Protocols	Paper	No	No
Education Training Protocols	Paper	No	No
Clinical Program Protocol	Paper	No	No
Video Conference Protocols and Etiquette Guide	Paper	No	No
Confidentiality and Privacy Policy	Paper	No	No
Consent Forms	Paper	No	No

For additional information please contact
Ron Epp at repp@health.gov.sk.ca or at 306-787-3205.