Dr. Louis A.D. Violi, a pulmonary fellow at Ohio State, says a hospital survey revealed that inmates feel as adequately cared for by the video system as they do by in-person visits. Violi recounts one instance in which the video system may have helped prevent a potential outbreak of tuberculosis. Last fall, he says, when specialists in Columbus detected the disease in a video of a culture taken at North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, they immediately isolated the patient to prevent spreading the highly contagious disease. Without video, it would have taken longer for the specialist to view the culture. The patient benefited by promptly receiving medication, says Violi.
Video treatment does entail at least one major disadvantage.
You can't estimate the size of the liver or push to see where the pain is. But that shortcoming affects specialists less than it does doctors who provide routine physical checkups. The telemedicine practice has so impressed Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Director Reginald Wilkinson that he has sanctioned Ed White, chief of the bureau of information and technology services, to pursue other videoconferencing applications. In all three cases, the department is tapping the medical group's videoconferencing equipment. But that doesn't include our savings, which will not just be travel money saved but will also come from a decrease in recidivism,'' White notes.