Telehealth Network Grant Program – University of Mississippi Medical Center
The Georgia Health Policy Center recently spoke to Simón Barinas, clinical research coordinator and project manager at the Dept. of Emergency Medicine at University of Mississippi Medical Center, about how the TNGP grant enabled the center to expand its tele-emergency services.
To date, what has been the biggest accomplishment or win in your telehealth program?
Through this grant we were able to add to our already existing tele-emergency system, which is very well established here at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. We added acute service layering, including teletoxicology, telepsychiatry, and telestroke.
One of the cool things that happened through this grant is that the advanced practice providers feel supported in those specialty services, and they do not feel like they are hung out to dry. All the services have been very useful. For stroke cases, it is the benefit of having that immediate assistance from a neurologist. For telepsychiatry, it is the ability to have that consult with the patient to come to a decision if it is OK for this person to be discharged or if that patient needs acute psychiatric care. These three services have been very well received.
What is a tip or early learning that you would share with an organization launching a similar telehealth program?
We already have a well-established tele-emergency system here that goes back over 20 years, and we have 20 sites that we provide services to. The biggest challenge was to make sure that we were not deviating from the procedures that were already established in the tele-emergency system. That process was streamlined, and we wanted to keep it as easy as possible for everyone that interacts the system and to make sure that we were following the steps for how everybody had already been doing it for years.
How do you see participation in the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth’s Telehealth Network Grant Program impacting your broader telehealth or health improvement efforts?
One the biggest hurdles that we have, and that is shared across the United States, is the closure of rural hospitals. Because of that financial instability that they are suffering from, we do have some fluctuation from time to time of hospitals dropping from our tele-emergency services.
Yet, we are trying to provide these services in a way that is beneficial to them and their patients. The ultimate goal of our project is to limit unnecessary transfers and unnecessary transportation for those patients. We want to keep them within their local communities. So, the hope is that we can expand our services to make that happen, while at the same time not overloading our physicians here.
What is next on the horizon for your grant-funded program?
We are focused on maintaining these expanded services. It improves patient care, and for our telepsychiatry, there is a benefit for the residents we are training to make sure that they are exposed to teleconsultation before they are attendings. We hope to keep all the services as we navigate the financial instability that the spoke sites are dealing with at the moment.