The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

Mariposa Community Health Center got its start in 1980 as a small clinic in Nogales, Arizona. It has grown over the years to be the largest provider of medical, dental and community-based health promotion and disease prevention services on the Arizona-Mexico border. 

And in 1996, the clinic expanded its reach by becoming the first clinical site to link to the Arizona Telemedicine Program.

The decision was not a no-brainer. For many Nogales families, going to see a doctor in Tucson, 60 miles away, was a fun family outing, with lunch and shopping on the side. But for many others, the transportation logistics were next to impossible. For them, telemedicine would be a godsend.

But there were concerns about how well it would work.

In Arizona, Sara Gibson, MD, a psychiatrist with Northern Arizona Regional Behavioral Health Authority in Flagstaff, was the first to practice psychiatry via telemedicine.

It was November 1996, and Gibson had just returned to work after being on maternity leave. “I was covering Apache County, on the New Mexico border, where there are only two towns, St. Johns and Springerville,” she recalls.

I hate telemedicine. Actually, to be more specific, I hate the word, telemedicine. It conjures visions of technology, not care—something futuristic, expensive, something only for people far away.

However, at it’s core, telemedicine is an opportunity to change how we care for each other by bringing people together in time, enabling “reassurance” when we or a loved one is most vulnerable.

Most people think of telemedicine as two people brought together over video for care. In healthcare there are advantages of video over voice. Looking another person in the eye, even via a monitor, provides the blink, the sense for the provider of the patient’s over all health. And for the patient, there is a sense of comfort, that the other person sees me, understands me. However, video alone is not the answer. 

To truly transform care, the technology has evolved, incorporating other forms of communication and workflow requirements. Texting and voice are the methods of choice for providers to talk to other providers and for providers to talk to patients. Workflow—the ability to schedule and to have comfort there will be someone to answer the “call”—is now part of the solution.

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.