Area Children to Benefit from New Outpatient Service at UPMC Altoona

Telemedicine Brings Pediatric Surgeons Close to Home

ALTOONA, Pa., – UPMC Altoona announces another addition to its growing telemedicine services: New, follow-up and postoperative patient real-time video evaluations and consultations with pediatric general and thoracic surgeons at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

The UPMC Teleconsult Center at Station Medical Center offers telemedicine services to children as outpatients, whose primary care physician believes they would benefit from a consultation with a pediatric surgeon. The pediatric surgery telemedicine service is available on the first Tuesday of each month.

“With this new service for families, we will offer new patient evaluations as well as postoperative follow-up care close to home, which will decrease wait time, travel and missed work and school days for families in the Altoona area,” said Stefan Scholz, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S., F.A.A.P., director, Minimally Invasive Surgery at Children’s. “Our goal is to make it convenient and efficient for the Altoona staff to consult with Children’s Hospital surgeons to determine the best care and treatment plan for each child.”

Telemedicine is the clinical application of providing care at a distance. It includes a growing variety of applications and services using two-way video, e-mail and other forms of telecommunications technology. For more than 40 years, hospitals have extended care to remote areas and its use continues to grow rapidly.

“This new service demonstrates UPMC’s continued investment in the expansion of advanced clinical services here in Blair County,” said Jerry Murray, president of UPMC Altoona and UPMC Bedford Memorial.

Children’s is leading the way in the development of telemedicine services to meet the needs of young patients regionally and around the world with video conferencing technologies that provide complex pediatric care through remote and virtual examinations—whenever and wherever expertise is needed.