Mayo makes case for Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine

(By Jim Spencer, www.startribune.com)
Nurses Jennifer Meindel and Chad Ditlevson stand in front of monitors in a small room at the Mayo Clinic reading vital signs and occasionally calling up video images of patients lying in beds. All of the 40-some patients cycling across the screens are in intensive care in the Mayo Clinic Health System. But none of them are actually at Mayo. The clinic’s electronic intensive care unit, known as eICU, is one of the frontiers of telemedicine. Backed by Dr. Daniel Brown, Mayo’s chief of critical care, and nurse manager Sarah Bell, Meindel and Ditlevson direct the care of very vulnerable patients from afar. Read more…