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Stepping across borders into the future of telepathology

2011; Elsevier BV; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4103/2153-3539.82049

2153-3539

Alexis B. Carter,

Radiology practices and education

The description of the design and implementation of interstate telepathology services between the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital (Indianapolis, Indiana) in the article “Inter-Institutional and Interstate Teleneuropathology”[1] provides a veritable “how-to” guide for other practices desiring to broaden the range and immediacy of their subspecialists’ expertise. For those acquainted with the installation of telepathology within an institution, some of the barriers that had to be surmounted will come as no surprise. However, the added legal, administrative, and medical complexity of crossing institutional credentialing systems as well as state jurisdictions of medical practice provided some additional challenges, the solutions for which are detailed in the article. Interstate telepathology practice is not a new phenomenon as previous reports of telepathology between individual Veterans Health Administration medical centers can be found as far back as 1997,[2] but this may be one of the first reports of interstate telepathology practice between administratively and financially independent health care entities. As such, new questions arose regarding case ownership, medical malpractice and correlation between the telepathologic frozen section diagnosis and the final diagnosis. As with many forward leaps in medical practice, the lag in the development of corresponding accreditation standards, laws, and regulations left some of those questions unanswered, and the innovators were left with making their best conservative guesses. This commentary describes the implications for telepathology practice as it moves forward from this point and highlights the need for guidelines for its safe and effective use.