ASHBURN, VA – Grace Keenan, MD, founder and medical director of Nova Medical Group in northern Virginia, is about to bring videoconferencing into the patient realm.

Even as the practice is in the midst of selecting an electronic medical record system, it is launching an executive wellness program that will employ videoconferencing for routine follow-up visits.

Keenan and her colleagues have been using videoconferencing since the spring to cut down on their own travel among the group’s four sites and to help Keenan and everyone else at the medical group balance domestic and professional responsibilities. As head of a thriving medical practice with 180 employees and mother of children ages 15, 5 and 4-year-old twins, Keenan is big on balance and flexibility.

“Any amount of time I can be home, even if I’m in the kitchen, is helpful,” she said.

She and the other physicians, clinicians and administrators at Nova discovered they could have meaningful meetings without being in the same room. Team leaders at Nova – the people in charge of the front desk and those who head nursing teams have to meet regularly. By meeting virtually, they have saved both money and time they would have been spent on the road traveling between facilities. Keenan figured patients might appreciate the same

flexibility.

Nova Medical Group designed its executive wellness program as a pilot project with The Telework Consortium, a nonprofit group funded by Congress.

William Mularie, CEO of The Telework Consortium, described his group’s mission as “getting government workers off the road.” Entities like the Nova Medical Group serve as proof of concept, said Mularie.

“One of the areas we really wanted to get into was healthcare,” Mularie said.

Among the success criteria is the introduction of new technology in the workplace, he said. “The quid pro quo is lessons learned.”

The consortium’s other pilots include Loudoun Magazine AND Loudoun County government.

The magazine estimates that commuting online is saving more than 1,700 miles of commuting per month on Virginia highways, according to editor David Hughes.

The consortium works with several technology partners, including 3M, AgilQuest, Expertcity, Comtech, Microsoft, Nortel and Marratech.

The Nova Medical Group and The Telework Consortium’s other partners illustrate a growing teleworking trend across the country. It’s a trend that has the federal government’s imprimatur and one that Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., staunchly supports. He led the efforts to include the telework provisions in the fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2006 spending bills.

In testimony Nov. 16 before the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce and Agency Organization, Wolf urged the panel to consider legislation that would increase telecommuting in both the public and private sector.

“I have said many times that there is nothing magic in strapping ourselves into a metal box every day only to drive to an office where we sit behind a desk working on a computer,” Wolf said.

In Mularie’s view, healthcare stands to show the greatest return from telework.

Take something as simple as a visit to the doctor, he said. It may take the patient as long as an hour to get ready and another hour of travel time for a four-minute visit.

Mularie envisions many more “real-time” appointments in the future. For physicians, it could mean seeing 20 patients an hour instead of four.

“The technology is there,” he said. “What Dr. Keenan is doing is breaking new ground.”