The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog, Category: Providers

A long-recognized leader in telemedicine innovation, the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) is establishing another first.

ATP is joining forces with the Four Corners Telehealth Consortium and the Southwest Telehealth Resource Center to host the first-ever Telemedicine and Telehealth Service Provider Showcase, October 6^th and 7^th, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix.

The Service Provider Showcase (SPS) will bring together companies that provide medical specialty services using telemedicine technology to hospitals, clinics, health-care systems, private practices and other providers that want to offer these services to their patients.

“Our industry has reached critical mass,” said Ronald S. Weinstein, MD, director and co-founder of the ATP, president emeritus of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), honorary co-chair of SPS and a pioneer in the telemedicine field. “It’s time to create an environment in which service providers can gather with health-care providers and develop a shared agenda for the future.”

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the Arizona Burn Center was one of hundreds of U.S. hospitals scrambling to get ready for the thousands of people who would be pulled from the burning wreckage of the World Trade Center.

At least, that was the hope. The reality, of course, is that almost none of the people who were at their desks or enjoying breakfast that morning at Windows on the World ever had a chance of being saved.

But out of that horrible day came the nation’s realization that terrorist attacks and other tragedies were no longer confined to the rest of the world. They could happen right here, to us.

And from that came a call to action – from federal and state governments, the American Burn Association and others – to build a system that could handle thousands of burn patients whenever the need occurred.

During the fall of 2011, I was selected to participate in the civic leader fellowship program put on by the Flinn-Brown Foundation. Not having aspirations for political office, I channeled my knowledge of healthcare with my passion for telehealth and jumped in headlong to fulfill the requirements of the program.

Each graduating fellow was charged with the responsibility to develop a common good project that served the citizens of Arizona. Each graduate was also assigned a mentor to help us on our journey. My mentor, Bob Smoldt, is the Chief Administrative Officer Emeritus for Mayo Clinic, Director of the ASU Healthcare Delivery and Policy Program and a great guy.

During initial meeting, I pitched Bob on different ideas that would improve healthcare delivery using telehealth technology. We reviewed existing barriers and quickly realized that to have the biggest impact, we needed a louder single-voice and some additional support. Bob solicited the help of Deni Cortese, Chief Executive Officer and President of Mayo Clinic, and Natalie Landman, PhD Associate Director for Projects at the ASU Healthcare Delivery and Policy Program (HCDPP).

Collectively, we decided to produce a barrier mitigation telemedicine white paper.

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.

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.