The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” ~John Dewey

A Superintendent in a rural Midwestern school district was seeking help to meet the communication needs of the students who struggled to comprehend language, produce speech, read and write to communicate, to learn, and to connect socially in their world of playgrounds, peers, tablets, and teachers.  Because of the school district’s rural location, this superintendent had difficulty recruiting full-time speech-language pathologists who could help these students effectively use communication to achieve and succeed in this school district.

Physicians practicing telemedicine have celebrated the implementation of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (“Compact”), which permits physicians practicing telemedicine to easily and quickly obtain a license to practice medicine in a number of states.  However, physicians becoming licensed in multiple states should be aware of the serious responsibilities and risks of multi-state licensure. 

As the anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence approaches, I’ve been thinking about a different kind of independence: The growing freedom from constraints on telehealth coverage.

Several recent and upcoming changes in telehealth policy are converging – nationally and here in Arizona – to reduce limitations on coverage.

In my previous blog on March 26, 2019, I discussed Phase One of “Using Simulation Labs to Teach Future Telehealth Providers at Universidad Mayor (UM) in Chile, South America.” In that blog, I described the expansive rurality of Chile and the simulation lab that is used for educating the health sciences students in Santiago. In this Phase two blog, I will discuss the second half of my visit that demonstrated that Chile has the need, and UM has the equipment available, to educate and train healthcare students about using telehealth.

When rural hospitals want to set up specialty services for their patients, say telestroke or tele-ICU, how do they go about finding a remote service provider? Online searches yield a lot of ads, but how do you sift through that information to find an appropriate partner?

That is why the Arizona Telemedicine Program established the national, online Telemedicine & Telehealth Service Provider Directory (SPD) – to provide a resource for decision-makers from organizations like hospitals, clinics, private practices, schools, correctional institutions, and others. The SPD makes it easy for you to find the tele-services you need. The focus is on companies that provide clinical services for interacting with patients from a distance—not on platforms, apps, technology, telecom, consultants or back-office services.