The Health Resources and Services Administration gave the University's Center for Telehealth a grant of nearly $1 million this month to create the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, supporting this branch of medicine focused on providing specialized care to remote patients through encrypted video conferencing. The new facility will create a partnership between six states - Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia - and the Washington, D.C. area to increase telehealth technology and expertise.
The HRSA has a commitment to promoting medical technology, especially by facilitating relationships and partnerships, Office of Telemedicine Director David Gordon said.
Gordon said telehealth was created in the early 1990s as a way to provide health care and knowledge to people in areas where they would not otherwise have access to such expertise. Telehealth provides a video conference between a help site and a community without specialists, enabling doctors to consult and offer medical care, while maintaining patient privacy through an encrypted system.
The University's well-established telemedicine program received the federally-funded grant to enable it to share its knowledge and help others replicate the models of telehealth, said Dr. Karen Rheuban, medical director of the University's Office of Telehealth.
The grant will help create a "collaborative process to promote telehealth throughout the Mid-Atlantic," Gordon said.
"It's a part of the solution that's helping improve access to health care for people whether they're rural or urban people," he added.
There are already more than 85 telehealth sites across Virginia with specialists giving services and education to patients, according to a University press release. The release also estimated that more than 6.7 million miles of travel were eliminated through telemedicine.
The growth of the program has already benefited the University's Nursing and Medical students.
"For students, what we have done is engaged our partners within the Nursing School and the Medical students and even University Law students [in] looking at issues related [to the field], and trying to bring [telehealth] into mainstream health care," Rheuban said.
Nursing students are taking an active role in learning the new technology. Gordon said telehealth is already being incorporated into the curriculum and called the students a "critical resource." He said telehealth will be "a tool for education to improve everyone's skills."
Regionally, Virginia has received support for this type of medical technology.
Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a bill in 2010 requiring insurance companies to cover telemedical clinical services, the University press release reports. "Virginia is the only state in the mid-Atlantic region that mandates insurance coverage for telemedicine," it states.
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