The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

Steve McCrosky was 16 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first report of men dying from diseases that very few people had ever heard of. He graduated from high school in 1983, when the collection of illnesses had been named human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV – the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, also known as AIDS.

McCrosky was captivated by the medical and social implications of the growing epidemic. After high school, he enrolled at Northeastern University in Boston, where he received his nursing degree. In 1994, he headed west to San Francisco where he witnessed the AIDS epidemic up close. He realized then that he wanted to be on the front lines of this unprecedented pandemic. In 2001, at the University of California, San Francisco, he completed training to be a family nurse practitioner. 

Teleradiology is probably the most advanced part of telemedicine in the United States. For nearly a decade almost all radiologic exams have been digital. The film era of radiology passed into history around the turn of the century.

Since radiologists interpret digital images on a computer workstation using picture archiving and communications software (PACS), the radiologist’s location does not really matter as long as the digital images can be easily transmitted to his or her workstation and the formal radiologic report can be transmitted to the patient’s physicians or other healthcare providers. This transmission of images and reports is usually internal to a hospital or medical center, but it can be across town or across the country.

Neonatologist Greg Warda, MD, arrived at Yuma Regional Medical Center 15 years ago, the hospital's only full-time neonatologist, and medical director of its neonatal intensive-care unit.

Back then, Warda's most urgent challenge was determining when a sick baby could remain in the Yuma hospital or needed to be transported to a larger hospital where multiple specialists could oversee the baby's care.

Although requirements vary for each health profession, in order to maintain licensure, most require some sort of continuing education (CE) to demonstrate competency and insure quality of care. 

Health professionals typically need to take time away from work and personal obligations to obtain continuing education credits, which means meeting these requirements can be fraught with challenging barriers. This is especially true for those practicing medicine in rural communities where opportunities can be very limited. Finding the time to attend educational events is problematic and is compounded by adding more time and expense for traveling to such events, particularly in a rural setting where backup support can be inadequate. 

Since the University of Arizona Medical Center (UAMC) is a teaching hospital, the Arizona Telemedicine Program is in an exceptionally unique position to support health professionals at telemedicine member sites achieve their objectives. The program provides a wide variety of educational opportunities via the content provided to students pursuing a career in health care. 

In 2005, patients who were hospitalized with an ischemic stroke in Tucson or Phoenix were 10 times as likely to receive potentially life-saving medical care as patients treated at hospitals in rural Arizona.

Today, patients in rural Arizona have as good or even better chance of receiving the best possible treatment – a “clot-busting” drug called tPA - compared with stroke patients in the state’s two largest cities.

The change came about because of the Telestroke Program at the Mayo Clinic – Phoenix.