Telemedicine in perinatal practice
- Featuring
- March 17 2025
- Duration 49: 17
Perinatal Associates of New Mexico is one of the largest perinatal practices in Southwest United States. In the past few years, the practice investigated whether telemedicine could expand its reach in order to compensate for a lack of maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialists and to make it easier for women, especially in rural areas, to access perinatal care. Here, Dr. Michael Ruma, MFM specialist, explains the journey, including how using Philips Collaboration Live has impacted the practice’s MFM capabilities.
At-a-glance:
- [06:05] The current state of perinatal practice at Perinatal Associates of New Mexico
- [08:25] Definition of telemedicine and its role in prenatal care
- [32:18] How COVID-19 amplified the importance of telemedicine
- [39:10] How telemedicine might shape the future of an MFM practice
In order to improve access to care, Perinatal Associates of New Mexico designed an office to function solely as a telemedicine practice and created another location to be its primary telemedicine consultation follow- up office. These offices opened during the COVID-19 pandemic and have since expanded. Using telemedicine has proven to be a way to make appointments more convenient and efficient for both patients and doctors. Some specific benefits Dr. Ruma has seen in his practice due to telemedicine are:
- Financial benefits for patients due to less missed work
- Giving women the opportunity to see a subspecialist when one isn’t locally available
- Less travel and decreased cost of travel to outreach clinics
- Lower cost around clinical infrastructure
Why embrace telemedicine as a tool?
Generally, MFMs subspecialist distribution is very uneven, and they’re clustered in metropolitan areas. Also, according to Dr. Ruma, “When MFMs are present, maternal care is better. Ideally, we want to expand our reach – we know that perinatal subspecialty care can improve the outcomes for mothers, and we need to provide that greater access.”
We know that perinatal subspecialty care can improve the outcomes for mothers, and we need to provide that greater access.
Michael Ruma
Maternal-fetal medicine specialist
Perinatal Associates of New Mexico
The practice started to use Philips telemedicine software Collaboration Live, which allows an ultrasound system to connect to a client and enables communication between the clinician and patient, in 2020. Since then, the practice has conducted several research studies to demonstrate the power of the tool. Among the results:
- Collaboration Live increased the ability of the MFM practice to generate revenue via telemedicine through physician consultation.
- Follow-up visits using the tool provided the ability to complete detailed fetal anatomic examination in real-time.
Featuring
Michael S. Ruma
MD, MPH
Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Perinatal Associates of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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Michael S. Ruma, MD, MPH, joined PANM in 2008 after completing his fellowship training in maternal-fetal medicine at UNC Chapel Hill. He also received his MPH in Health Policy and Administration from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina and is the current president of PANM
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Footnotes
- Ruma MS. Revenue generation analysis of telemedicine tool in perinatology. J Ultrasound Med. 2022. 41(suppl1):S163.
- Kelly NP, Scherer E, Johnson K, et al. Findings from implementation of a remote collaboration solution to perform echocardiograms during the COVID-19 pandemic. JASE. 2021 doi.org/10.1016/j.echo.2021.10.001.
- Ruma MS, et al. Prospective study of 30 subjects undergoing routine obstetric ultrasound imaging, New Mexico, USA. The use of a novel telemedicine tool in perinatology [abstract]. 30th ISUOG World Congress, 2020.
Disclaimer
Results are specific to the institution where they were obtained and may not reflect the results achievable at other institutions. Results in other cases may vary.