Primary Care
E-Consults Quickly Connect Patients With Specialists
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Medicaid will reimburse some health centers in the state for providing patients with access to medical specialist through electronic consultations, which some providers believe will increase low-income patients’ access to care. “The impact is potentially huge,” said Dr. Daren Anderson, director of the Weitzman Institute, which is the research and quality improvement arm of Community Health Center Inc. (CHC). CHC is a Middletown-based network of 13 health centers that includes facilities in New Britain, Stamford, Norwalk, Clinton, and Old Saybrook. An e-consult enables a primary care doctor to contact a specialist—for a second look at patient’s echocardiogram, for instance—and securely send part or all of a patient’s medical records electronically. The specialist then replies to the primary care doctor within a few days (but more typically within just a few hours), reducing the need for a patient visit to the specialist.