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Ed Yeates ReportingA pilot project allowing folks to visit a patient in the hospital without ever going there has proven so successful, it will now become a routine service at all Intermountain Health Care medical centers.
Parents, especially, love the option. Amanda McClure and her son, who was born thirteen weeks premature, are alone in a room at Primary Children's Hospital. Yet, some 150 to 200 family and friends are visiting her.
How? In a special resource center one floor down, Amanda visits with family in Idaho, electronically - on a secure website. She posts pictures and information about Aedan's recovery in her own words. She can talk back and forth, just as if they were sitting next to her.
Amanda McClure, Aedan's Mom: "My godmother and my mother and father check it every night. My mother-in-law and father-in-law check it every night. It's easy for them to look at their convenience and post at their convenience."
Amanda takes pictures and just walks downstairs to post it on the site. In fact, a whole collection of pictures shows how Aedan is growing and putting on weight. Parents can take as many pictures as often as they want. And if they don't have their own camera, they can check one out right at the hospital. One family member sent Aedan a little homemade cap. Now she can see it on his head.
Amanda McClure: "You're just able to do one thing. It emails everybody who's signed up."
These are the patient's own sites. They, not the hospital, have the passwords.
Nancy Nowak, V.P. Intermountain Health Care Clinical Operations: "The family has the opportunity to tell their story. So they're writing the words, they're telling you what's going on."
Amanda McClure: "It's been just a time saver and a life saver. It's awesome, it's the coolest thing."
And parents or patients can leave the sites up as long as they want, even after they leave the hospital.
The electronic sites also allow family and friends who are sick to visit without exposing a high risk patient to infection.
