Chesterfield, Mo.-based Mercy broke ground Tuesday on a new telemedicine center designed to provide care remotely to millions of patients.
The four-story, 120,000-square-foot center is being built in Chesterfield and is slated to open in 2015. The center will house more than 300 clinicians and support staff who will provide round-the-clock telemedicine services to patients in Mercy facilities as well as some outside the system through partnerships with other providers and large employers. The health system estimates the center will conduct 5 million telemedicine consults by 2020.
Telemedicine services offered at the new center will range from telestroke consults to eICU coverage to teleradiology, bringing all of Mercy's telemedicine services under central command at the facility.
The virtual care center aims to expand physician and specialist access to patients living in rural areas while helping to ease the overall physician shortage.
"There's a decreasing number of physicians in both rural and urban areas, while at the same time there's a growing senior population that will require more care," said Tom Hale, MD, PhD, executive medical director of Mercy's telehealth services, in a news release. "Telemedicine will have a significant impact by letting virtual physicians and nurses be the first point of triage and care for patients in the hospital, emergency room or even at home. Mercy's virtual care frees up physicians while also attending to patients faster than before, and our specialists bring a level of expertise that would be impossible to share without telemedicine."
During the groundbreaking, Mercy President and CEO Lynn Britton emphasized the first-of-its-kind facility will help Mercy harness the benefits of telemedicine to provide the best possible care for its patients. "This will be a new era in health," he said. "Virtual medicine, delivered to patients where they are, with the clinical excellence and compassion that is Mercy."
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