Giving Compass' Take:

• Eric Wicklund reports that two small VA hospitals have found success in using telemedicine training for antibiotic stewardship.

• How can funders help underresourced, particularly rural, hospitals access additional training?  

• Learn how organizations are working to close the rural health gap in Oregon. 

A telemedicine platform linking two small VA hospitals with infectious disease experts has helped staff at those hospitals improve their antibiotic stewardship.

The pilot program, detailed in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, is similar to the Project ECHO telehealth platform first developed at the University of New Mexico and now being used across the country. In this particular case, staff at two rural VA hospitals without infectious disease specialists learned how to improve antibiotic stewardship by meeting weekly with ID experts at larger health systems through a connected care platform.

The year-long study found that staff at the small hospitals enacted more than two-thirds of the recommendations from experts and became more confident in their ability to prescribe or reduce antibiotics when needed. The study did not track clinical outcomes.

The study targets a pain point in many rural and remote health systems: a shortage of infectious diseases-trained physicians and pharmacists. In the Veterans Health Administration alone, a 2012 survey found that 40 percent of the 130 VA hospitals providing inpatient care did not have a full-time infectious diseases physician on staff.

Read the full article about telehealth training by Eric Wicklund at TeleHealth News.