From the November 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Immediate answers
One afternoon, during my emergency room rotation, a mother rushed her child in with severe abdominal pain. Equipped with my handheld ultrasound device, I diagnosed the patient with a ruptured appendix, which required immediate surgical attention. Typically, an order would have needed to be placed for a computed tomography (CT) scan or an ultrasound examination performed by a sonographer elsewhere in the hospital. This takes extra time, and is anxiety provoking for the patient and the family. Having this technology at my fingertips, I was able to quickly call the surgeon with an immediate diagnosis and use the rest of the time to keep the mother and child calm before the procedure and send them directly into surgery.
Time is of the essence in a case like this and adding an additional cost for a comprehensive ultrasound exam or CT scan only increases stress to an already complex emergency. United States healthcare expenses are projected to increase by 2.7 percent per year — reaching a landmark $6 trillion by 2027; we have a unique opportunity to evaluate every opportunity to cut down on costs and time.
Primary care — and the healthcare industry as a whole — has often been hesitant to adopt emerging technologies. And for good reason; doctors hold the lives of their patients in their hands, and every new tool could be considered a gamble. But given the trove of reputable data and feedback from professionals using them in their practices, the benefits of handheld ultrasound have moved past speculation, and into certainty. Just as the stethoscope once changed the landscape of medicine, handheld ultrasounds have the power to create an immense shift across the entire healthcare continuum. Doctors just need to start recognizing their value, and the benefits will follow.
About the author: David graduated from the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, where he was part of a new, innovative curriculum providing longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound teaching throughout his 4 years. He took opportunities to learn more about ultrasound during that time, providing teaching to the junior medical students and acted as an ambassador to a sister school in Australia to help bring the ultrasound curriculum there. David attended the Family Medicine Residency Program at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii where he built a residency ultrasound curriculum from the ground up. He taught point-of-care ultrasound to residents as well as surrounding clinics, and paved the way for some of the first family medicine residents to join Emergency Medicine Ultrasound Fellowships in the Army. David still utilizes point-of-care ultrasound in his daily practice as a family physician and continues to advocate for and publish on the topic of point-of-care ultrasound in primary care.Back to HCB News
