Abstract

Telemedicine and video patient care visits have been present within the medical and nursing community for over twenty years. These visits serve an alternative purpose to in person face to face visits allowing continued care for those who may be too elderly to leave their home, those who cannot afford the high cost of traveling several hundred miles to a specialty center, or for those who have very busy lives, who need to compress the appointment into a short video or telephone visit. The electrophysiology department within the University of Michigan has adopted a research Telemedicine study to determine if video or phone visits can decrease the time needed to recognize, diagnose, and treat any change in arrhythmias. The study aims to improve the subject’s self-efficacy of medication knowledge and use, activity, and understanding of the arrhythmia. This ongoing study has enrolled 31 subjects as of this date with 17 subjects in the telemedicine arm of the study and 14 subjects enrolled in the standard arm of the study. The telemedicine subjects receive monthly visits for three consecutive months compared with standard visit subjects who have face to face visits every six months. The two goals of the study are to improve or shorten the time to diagnosis of any new arrhythmia and treatment and to improve the subject’s self-efficacy of medication knowledge and use, activity, and arrhythmia knowledge.