The Mayo Clinic Teleneonatology Program has the infrastructure, technology and clinical expertise to collaboratively manage the newborn with the local care team attending the high-risk delivery or caring for infants less than 28 days of age in the Emergency Department. When your team receives teleneonatology services from Mayo Clinic, you can expect to:

• Further improve the quality of high-risk newborn resuscitations. A recent retrospective study found that teleneonatology significantly improves the quality of high-risk and preterm newborn resuscitations in community hospitals. This positive impact is even greater when the consult occurs earlier in the clinical course.
• Safely keep more newborns at your community hospital. Telemedicine ensures that critically ill babies are appropriately transferred to a higher level of care when medically necessary, while allowing lower risk babies to remain at the local hospital with their families after the telemedicine consult. This is a great benefit for the newborn, family and the community hospital.

Our innovative Teleneonatology Program is:

• Supported by a highly reliable, easy to use technology system. Together Neonatal Medicine and Connected Care have studied various telemedicine technologies to understand the technical requirements for a high-performing teleneonatology program. The end result is a highly reliable, proactively monitored, mobile telemedicine system that is easy for the local care team to use.
• A world leader in teleneonatology. Our team has published work in highly regarded, peer-reviewed journals, and our scholarly achievements have been presented at regional, national and international pediatric and telemedicine conferences. Other health care organizations come to Mayo Clinic when they want to develop their own teleneonatology program.

Types of support provided by the program

• Does the program replace the local staff who care for newborns?

  No. The Mayo Clinic Teleneonatology Program enhances the care you provide through collaboration and by providing assistance while your on-call consultants may be on the way to the hospital. It does not replace the valuable team available at your organization.

• Does the program offer care guidance at the time of newborn delivery?

  Yes. When unanticipated complications occur at the time of delivery, our team can be activated to assist the local team until the on-call physician or neonatal transport team arrives.

• What kind of teleneonatology support is provided for neonatal resuscitation training or neonatal mock codes?

  The Teleneonatology Program supports simulated activations during your scheduled Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) training sessions or hospital mock codes so your teams can practice service activation and interact with the teleneonatologist.

Clinical performance questions

• Has the program been shown to improve the quality of care?

  Yes. The clinical impact of our program has been studied and published in peer-reviewed journals. We've demonstrated that our Teleneonatology Program significantly improves the quality of high-risk newborn resuscitations and improves adherence to critical process measures.

• Does your program reduce the number of patient transfers?

  Yes. Since the start of the program, we've demonstrated that approximately 1 in 3 babies who receive a teleneonatology consult can safely remain in the local hospital. This is clearly a huge benefit for families.

Contact us

For more information on the Mayo Clinic Teleneonatology Program, email teleneonatology@mayo.edu.

To make a referral, call 855-MAYO-KID (855-629-6543).

Feb. 16, 2019

Original article: https://www.mayoclinic.org/teleneonatology-program/resources-for-physicians