Concept of operations for a regional telemedicine hub to improve medical emergency response

Telemedicine (TM) is a tool that permits medical services to be provided remotely. Applications of telemedicine to disaster response began in the mid-1980s for natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes and for “staged” disasters in experiments and exercises. These activities led to the concept of a regional telemedicine hub (TMH) with an extended network of clinical providers, which potentially could alleviate problems associated with surge capacity during disaster response. However, health-related benefits associated with this organizational model for disaster-related telemedicine remain to be quantitatively tested. In this paper, we describe a simulation study used to examine the operation of a regional telemedicine hub during the acute phases of hospital patient management in a hypothetical earthquake scenario. We explore the impact of using telemedicine to provide emergency specialty care to expand surge capacities at both local and regional levels.