Credit: Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso
EL PASO, Texas-With help from a nearly $500,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (TTUHSC El Paso) is making a push to improve health care in rural areas through telemedicine.
TTUHSC El Paso’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine recently received a grant of $499,227 from the USDA to use telemedicine to help improve health care for rural communities in West Texas. Ogechika Alozie, M.D., M.P.H., TTUHSC El Paso’s chief health informatics officer (CHIO), said the grant will allow the medical school to build off a tele-education network started by the Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing.
In 2016, the Hunt School of Nursing received a $430,780 grant to provide long-distance health education to underserved communities in rural West Texas. Penny Stout, D.N.P., R.N., assistant dean and chair at the Hunt School of Nursing, said the money from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service program, along with matching funds from TTUHSC El Paso, paid for collaborative equipment that is now installed in nine rural locations in West Texas.
The new grant will allow the Foster School of Medicine to leverage the existing IT infrastructure, along with additional telemedical equipment, to provide specialized health care through telemedicine.
“Health care is evolving toward telemedicine, and telehealth, for a host of reasons,” Dr. Alozie said. “One, we’re facing a physician shortage, particularly in rural areas. Just as importantly, patients are looking at ways to engage with health care on their own terms. Telemedicine can provide alternative ways to access care and potentially enhance the patient experience.”
In addition to the equipment, such as video terminals for high definition long-distance communication, the grant will help purchase telemedicine carts with stethoscopes, and other medical grade equipment, for each of the distance sites. That way, someone can be at the rural site taking vital sign measurements to help the doctor make a diagnosis, Dr. Alozie said. The telemedicine program will allow doctors to reduce time spent traveling, which for some, had been a minimum of eight-hour round trips for specialty visits in rural areas.
“There are some areas where we send a doctor once a month, and is that really the best use of their time?” Dr. Alozie said. “With this, they could be in their office on their video terminal, someone could be at the distance site with a telemedicine cart, and patients can get treated without that long drive.”
Although this grant is specifically designed to provide telemedicine to rural areas, replacing face-to-face doctor visits with telemedicine is becoming more prevalent throughout the country.
“Health care is trending that way for many reasons,” Dr. Alozie said. “One, there aren’t enough physicians to take care of all the people who live in the United States. But in the bigger arc of health care, we are living in a mobile world, which is driving more people to ask for health care on demand. People don’t want to drive to a doctor’s office and wait a long time to see a doctor for 5 minutes, then not really understand what’s going on. You’re going to see a lot of consumer groups trying to disrupt health care by developing applications where you can see a physician via the internet at your convenience.”
A March article in Modern Healthcare expressed worry that patients will begin to turn away from traditional health care providers if they are not offered a telemedicine option. The article noted that only 15 percent of physicians currently work in practices that use telemedicine.
The grant and telemedicine visits are part of what keeps TTUHSC El Paso on top of trends in health care. Consumer demands are going to require adjustments in how doctors and nurses handle patients, Dr. Alozie said.
“It’s going to take a lot of change,” he said. “TTUHSC El Paso doesn’t have a telemedicine program right now, so we are going to develop a new program aligned with our vision and strategy. It’s going to take everyone, not just clinicians and physicians, adjusting the way they think about health care.”
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