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Financing in danger: Children's intensive care network in Saxony needs help!
The children's tele-intensive care network in Saxony is fighting for funding to secure critical medical care for children.
Financing in danger: Children's intensive care network in Saxony needs help!
In Saxony there are currently great concerns about the future of the children's tele-intensive network, which was launched in 2022. How kma online reported that the funding for the project has been running out since last year. Franziska Waurig from the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital Dresden states that further financial support is uncertain. The aim of the network is to optimize pediatric emergency medicine in Saxony and to immediately bring telemedical help to regional children's clinics, especially for clinics without their own children's intensive care unit.
An evaluation of the eHealthSax project has shown that in around a third of cases, care for young patients close to home could be successfully achieved. Not only has the network created a new transport structure for critically ill children, but it has also provided a dedicated 24/7 transport team consisting of a pediatric intensive care physician and a nurse. In the event of an emergency, this team is prepared to load appropriate, child-friendly equipment into emergency vehicles and to stabilize patients on site.
Successful training and challenges
As part of the project, practical simulation training was carried out in which 216 employees from the partner clinics took part in 12 courses. The Federal Joint Committee has emphasized the importance of telemedical networking for the continuation of the care network. But financing the investment costs, hardware and software as well as personnel costs remains a tricky problem. The current center remuneration is considered inadequate, further increasing concerns about the future of the project.
Waurig expressed the hope that the network can continue to provide a comprehensive care network for critically ill children in the coming year. The need for such an infrastructure is becoming increasingly clear in the current discussion about children's health care. As a study on telemedical networking for children's hospitals in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania shows, parents' acceptance and trust in such services is high. In this study, the on PubMed published, 74.5 percent of parents found telemedicine to be helpful in treating their children, and 88.1 percent could envision telemedicine supplementing pediatric care in the future.
Parents also reported benefits such as time savings, availability of expertise, and avoidance of long wait times. Nevertheless, they expressed concerns about the lack of physical contact between doctor and patient, which poses a challenge to the adoption of telemedicine. This makes it all the more important to inform parents about the results of doctor-to-doctor consultations in order to further increase satisfaction.
In view of the current challenges, it is essential that the financing of the children's tele-intensive network in Saxony is secured. Otherwise, the positive developments in pediatric emergency medicine could be seriously jeopardized. Time is of the essence and everyone involved is required to find solutions to maintain urgently needed services for sick children.