The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

Telehealth has taken off in Arizona and nationwide, and policy-makers have been scrambling to keep up. To focus on the policy issues affecting and being affected by the growth of telemedicine and telehealth, the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) and Southwest Telehealth Resource Center (SWTRC) hosted the inaugural Arizona Telemedicine Policy Symposium Sept. 23 in Phoenix.

ATP Director Ronald S. Weinstein, MD, and Arizona Corporation Commission Chairman Robert “Bob” Burns opened the symposium, which attracted more than 120 attendees. The agenda featured an amazing lineup of policy and telehealth leaders discussing recent and exciting changes to telehealth policy and future changes needed. As the emcee, I had a front-row seat to hear about all that is happening—and there’s a lot!

You can put the word "smart" in front of just about anything these days — including an entire city. But what does it actually mean?

The concept of smart cities is incredibly exciting. Cities have always been social, cultural and productive centers of society. But the city of the future will help us work and play even smarter, commute more quickly, and make use of more advanced and affordable products and public services. That includes health care.

As the world explores what smart cities are capable of, we're seeing more ways they'll impact the telemedicine industry and vice versa. Let's take a closer look.

With rates of drug and alcohol addiction at record highs in this country, many people never get the substance abuse treatment they need. Telebehavioral counseling can help close this gap, as a helpful support for people who may need ongoing maintenance therapy during recovery from a substance use disorder (SUD), and as a way to triage and refer clients with more serious addictions to the right rehab provider. But discerning when to refer a client to rehab can be difficult, especially within a telehealth context.

The purpose of keeping a patient in a hospital is to provide all the care they need and send them home when they are ready to take care of themselves. But in some cases, the patient has to be readmitted to a medical facility.

The definition of readmission is simple: it means another inpatient stay that starts within a month from the discharge date of the previous stay. It may be for the same cause of the previous admission, but it may also be unrelated. The readmission doesn’t have to occur at the same hospital to be regarded as such.

For patients, readmissions can be devastating.

I must get at least one request a week to fill out some sort of survey – on everything from how do I like the university’s new travel system to how would I rate the tech support I got when trying to fix a bug on my computer. I’m sure you do too, and, like you, I pretty much ignore at least half of them. Okay, maybe 75% of them. But I do fill out some surveys – those where I think my opinion or feedback is going to make a difference.

Well, here’s your chance to make a difference! The Arizona Telemedicine Program and Southwest Telehealth Resource Center are gathering information to educate key healthcare stakeholders about telemedicine and telehealth use and needs in our state. We have created a brief survey on organizations’ telehealth use, providers, benefits, and barriers. We are hoping to compile a complete picture of how and why organizations are using – and not using - telehealth. We’ve already done a pilot with sites in Northern Arizona and have gathered some very interesting data. But as we all know, the more data the better!