Osteoporosis Treatment Improved With New Program

The Bone Health Extension for Community Health Care Outcomes (TeleECHO) effectively expanded the capacity for management of patients with osteoporosis by increasing knowledge levels among health care professionals working in communities with limited resources, according to a recent study.

While osteoporosis is a common condition globally, large gaps in treatment and access to specialists still exist, particularly for patients and doctors living in rural and underserved communities. To address limited access to care, the researchers designed TeleECHO, which uses real-time ongoing videoconferencing in order to mentor health care professionals living in these communities to advance their knowledge for how to care for patients with osteoporosis.
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During the first 21 months, 263 registered health care professionals in the United States and other countries enrolled in the weekly Bone Health TeleECHO program. A total of 221 health care professionals attended at least 1 online clinic and each session had about 35 to 40 attendees.

Overall, the researchers found significant improvements in 20 domains that assessed of self-confidence of osteoporosis care following the TeleECHO program.

“Bone Health TeleECHO can contribute to mitigating the crisis in osteoporosis care by leveraging scarce resources, providing motivated practitioners with skills to provide better skeletal health care, closer to home, with greater convenience, and lower cost than referral to a specialty center,” the researchers concluded. “Bone Health TeleECHO can be replicated in any location worldwide to reach anyone with Internet access, allowing access in local time zones and languages. The ECHO model of learning can be applied to other aspects of bone care, including the education of fracture liaison service coordinators, residents and fellows, and physicians with an interest in rare bone diseases.”

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Lewiecki EM, Rochelle R, Bouchonville MF, Chafey DH, Olenginski TP, Arora S. Leveraging scarce resources with Bone Health TeleECHO to improve the care of osteoporosis. J Endocrine Society. 2017;1(12): 1428–1434. https://doi.org/10.1210/js.2017-00361.