USDA’s Distance Learning and Telemedicine program is helping Gonzales Healthcare System with $300,000 in funding to advance healthcare technology and increase the standard of patient care in Gonzales County in Texas. The funds will be used to improve critical tele-radiological services at the hospital to update the current tele-radiological equipment.
This is going to make it possible for radiologists located several hours from the hospital to have immediate access to images sent from the hospital and provide quicker collaboration and diagnosis between the local hospital and Radiology Partners-Houston, a practice highly specialized in every facet of radiology.
Gonzales Hospital currently performs over 18,000 radiological diagnostic services annually. Clinical specialties such as cardiology, endoscopy, mammography, orthopedic, neurology, intracerebral angiography, vascular, gastroenterology, interventional, pediatric musculoskeletal and bronchoscopy rely on the hospital’s radiological capacity to transmit visual data images and accompanying information.
In Mississippi, USDA’s DLT grant program and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) selected the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a three year $578,360 grant. USDA will fund $378,360 with a $200,000 match from ARC.
The grant titled “Telemedicine Emergency and Specialty Care for Appalachia in North Mississippi” (TESCAN) will provide funds and service to ten additional sites, including nine Appalachia counties and one county in the Mississippi Delta.
The funding will help to expand the number of healthcare delivery sites in the state linked to the Medical Center to 104 sites. The grant will position the medical center as a hub site for each of the county-based hospitals, ultimately reaching 168,862 additional rural residents.
In another part of the country, the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments in Alaska received $263,377 from the DLT program for telehealth projects. The funding will provide video- conferencing equipment for clinical project sites located in Alaska’s rural Yukon Koyukuk Census area and serve 985 people in five villages.
The telemedical equipment will enable face-to-face medical consultations between a local care provider and a patient on one end and then connect to a physician specialist at a distant large hospital. The video conferencing equipment will also be used to help local care providers keep up-to-date on new procedures and other aspects related to medical education.
In New York State, the Seneca Nation of Indians received $463,253 from USDA to purchase video conferencing equipment to use for telemedicine. The equipment will enable patients and their caregivers to be able to access mental health counseling and specialty care at a distance.
With the DLT funding, five end-user sites at Seneca Nation will have access to two psychiatric offices located hours away. The main clinic site, the Cattaraugus Indian Health Clinic will enable patients to connect to distant specialists. The equipment will also be used to train, update knowledge, and help maintain the needed level of expertise at local caregiver sites.
In Washington State and Eastern Oregon, DLT funding for $329,269 will be used to purchase telemedical equipment for a consortium of 12 healthcare organizations sponsored by the Kadlec Regional Medical Center (KRMC) in Richland, The healthcare organizations have banded together to serve 19 video endpoint sites at rural clinics in the geographic area along the Columbia River.
Medical carts equipped with cameras, video monitors, and medical exam devices will be purchased for the video endpoint sites and specialized servers to bridge, schedule, and otherwise manage the total operation from a central location, will be purchased for the KRMC.