To show how important telemedicine is becoming, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it will provide 34 states and one territory with funds from its Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) program to improve access to healthcare and education, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced.
Telemedicine allows patients to visit physicians remotely, live over video, for immediate care or to capture and store video or still images, according to telemedicine.com. Patient data obtained this way ithen stored and sent to physicians for diagnosis and follow-up treatment at a later time.
The DLT program is part of the USDA's Rural Development division and will provide a total of $30.2 million to projects that support its mission.
Often, healthcare is not easily available or accessible in rural areas.
According to Ruth Soelle, MPH, at emergency medical news, more than 1,320 critical access hospitals provide emergency care to people who live in rural areas across the United States. Supplying care to people who live in these areas is becoming increasingly difficult because hospitals face decreasing margins and few doctors are willing to locate their practices away from the city and high technology.
Physicians and urban medical centers are now looking for ways to help their colleagues meet the needs of rural America, she reports, and telemedicine is increasingly playing a valuable role.
A recent study found that people in rural areas rate the quality of their health care lower in 7 out of every 10 health care markets, according to a story at healthtechzone.com. In fact, according to the press release announcing the study, both physicians and consumers in rural areas are more likely to rate quality of care lower than those in urban and suburban markets.
The report showed that new methods of care delivery – including telemedicine and telehealth – where patients are treated remotely without hospital stays, can help rural health care systems stay afloat financially in the future.
The Federal Communications Commission also recently announced it has initiated “a pilot funding program to create a nationwide broadband network dedicated to health care, connecting public and private non-profit health care providers in rural and urban locations”.
According to the USDA, 100 distance learning and telemedicine projects will receive funding, including grants to install video equipment in an off-shore ship’s medical examining room and to train emergency medical technicians.
Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
