The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

Despite the Affordable Care Act’s rocky roll-out last October, more than 7 million Americans have signed on for health-care coverage through the Act as of March 31. Another 3 million have enrolled in state Medicaid plans, largely due to a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that subsidizes states’ expansions of Medicaid eligibility.

A major concern accompanying implementation of the ACA is the demand these millions of newly insured will place on the nation’s already inadequate physician supply.

But an article in the March 2014 issue of The American Journal of Medicine notes that advances in telemedicine, telehealth and mHealth (mobile health) services can help compensate for the physician shortage while meeting the ACA’s goal for increased health-care efficiency.

An ICU nurse at North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley checked in on one of her patients. He was on a ventilator and his vital signs all looked fine. But the nurse had a feeling something was wrong. She contacted the Banner doctor who also was monitoring the patient from more than 800 miles away.

Telemedicine is burgeoning in northern Arizona, thanks largely to three Flagstaff-based telemedicine programs. All three programs are not-for-profit, bringing services to medically underserved areas and populations throughout the five counties of northern Arizona. All three programs have won acclaim for their telemedicine programs. And all three have collaborative, innovative leaders.

Teri Dunn, a licensed clinical social worker, has been working with behavioral health patients for 34 years. For the last 12, she’s been with North Country HealthCare, a community health center based in Flagstaff.

North Country also serves patients at 14 other sites across northern Arizona, where there used to be little or no access to behavioral health care.

Telemedicine has changed that. 

Jack Porter isn’t one to admit he had a stroke three years ago.

“I didn’t have a stroke,” he will tell you. “I had a stroke of luck.”

Porter, who has lived in Bisbee since he was two weeks old, was unable to talk or move his left leg or left arm when he arrived at Copper Queen Community Hospital’s emergency room. Daniel Roe, MD, chief medical officer and director of emergency services and telemedicine at Copper Queen, ordered a CT scan that showed a clot forming on the right side of Porter’s brain.

But there was no neurologist at the hospital to advise what to do next. And that’s what led to Porter’s “stroke of luck.”