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Feeding difficulties are one of the most commonly occurring issues in pediatric care, affecting approximately a quarter of typically developing children and up to 90% of children with special needs. Community health care professionals often struggle to adequately address the complex problems of children with more complicated feeding disorders. For the most severely affected of these children, feeding tubes and poor growth are ongoing challenges. To provide quality care, video teleconferencing with specialized providers offers outstanding opportunities for comprehensive treatment and communication to enhance long-term outcomes. This article provides results of a teleconferencing pilot project addressing the needs of children with complex feeding disorders referred from locations up to 3,500 miles away. Fifteen patients participated in the 26-month project from September 2002 to October 2004. The impact of the intervention on family satisfaction, costs to family, provider satisfaction, and clinical outcomes is also reported.
Although the territory of hightech and high-cost communication devices were previously more difficult to attain, videoconferencing is now readily available in more and more community settings. Today, most health care professionals have dedicated phone line access (ISDN) in their offices, which is the technology required, along with a video camera and viewing station, that to enable the provision of videoconferences with remote specialty care providers.
The medical home model has crystallized health care's commitment to providing comprehensive care to children and their families. As health care providers strive to provide quality care in the child's home community whenever possible, telemedicine appears to be a critical part of that comprehensive care, increasing access to pediatric specialists and services (Marcin et al., 2004; Spooner & Gotlieb, 2004). On average, about one-quarter of the young children followed by health care providers experience feeding difficulties (Mays & Volkmar, 1993). Most of these children will respond well to suggestions offered to parents on feeding methods, food choices, approach, and behavioral recommendations.
However, when children need more specialty care than health care providers can offer, it is unlikely that the necessary care will be available in the community. The numbers of complex feeding disorders in any given community is too small to necessitate a comprehensive feeding program in each community. The answer is an ISDN phone connection away.
Numerous models effectively bring specialty care closer to...