TAG Portal

Monday, March 31, 2008

UNM Health Sciences Center Gets $15 Million to Create Telehealth Network

By Winthrop Quigley
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
    The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has received a three-year, $15.5 million Federal Communications Commission grant to create a new telehealth network that will serve 500 facilities in the Southwest.
    UNM's Center for Telehealth and Cybermedicine Research will build a large telehealth network— called the Southwest Telehealth Access Grid— out of 200 smaller, existing telehealth systems and connect about 300 more sites in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Texas and Utah.
    The Southwest TAG will be one of 69 grids nationwide funded by the FCC with a three-year $417 million grant program.
    "What this does is provide the opportunity to build out a virtual electronic highway," said Dale Alverson, a pediatrician and Southwest TAG principal investigator. "It gets you connected, regardless of where you live, to health care services to which you'd have to travel to receive or wait for a specialist to come and see you."
    UNM has offered consultations, training and other services to health care providers and patients for 11 years through existing teleconferencing equipment at the Health Sciences Center. More than 7,500 people participated in telehealth conferences in the 2006 fiscal year, according to UNM.
    But the virtual highway that connects Albuquerque-based specialists and other professionals to practitioners and patients in other parts of the state is not big enough and it doesn't go enough places, Alverson said.
    That means people who need care that isn't available locally, especially specialty care, have to schedule appointments in the state's larger communities and travel there, which takes time and costs money. "Because of that barrier, many people lack adequate continuity of care," Alverson said.
    Leonard Thomas, Albuquerque Area Indian Health Service chief medical officer, said the 86,500 people his office serves often have to go a minimum of 150 miles for care. "They have a card, they can get coverage," Thomas said. "But if they don't have a provider, especially at rural sites, the coverage doesn't do them any good."
    Thomas expects the new grid to improve remote areas' access to radiology, psychology and ophthalmology services in particular.
    Alverson expects an expanded telehealth system to relieve what he expects will be a major public health problem: Iraq war veterans returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.
    "Already in New Mexico, 15,000 veterans have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan," Alverson said. "One third of them have been diagnosed with PTSD. Most of them are from rural communities. Access to the Veterans Administration (health system) to get services for PTSD, access to get services for the family— because this affects partners and children as well— is a huge problem because of the distance."
    Alverson envisions specialists in Albuquerque using telehealth technology to train local providers to help PTSD patients. Specialists in the bigger cities can counsel patients directly over the telehealth link. Physicians can help local doctors manage patients' medications. Veterans can take part in group counseling sessions with other PTSD sufferers from around the state without leaving their own towns.