Primary care and hemodialysis monitoring through telemedicine.

Telemedicine offers the primary care physician an opportunity to improve time management while continuing to provide optimal, cost efficient care. The following paper offers a means with which to deliver such care and describes the relationship required between physician and patient to deliver optimal telemedical care. The Texas Telemedicine Project offered an avenue for the physician participants to explore the best delivery system with which to successfully employ telemedicine in the practice of medicine. Patients became comfortable with interactive healthcare delivery quickly, and preferred it as a means of receiving primary care as well as continuous physician monitoring during dialysis treatments. This study leads the authors to the opinion that telematic healthcare delivery will only be successful when the patient/physician relationship most closely mimics that of face-to-face contact.