News and Events
Community Outreach

April 1, 2011

Director of Nursing, Mark Schweyer, reported on the progress he’s made in EPHC’s Telemedicine program. Schweyer has a multi-dimensional approach, focusing on grant funding, partnerships with other organizations in our region (including Tahoe-Forest, Plumas County public health, schools, and public libraries), educational opportunities, and patient specialist services.

The Sierra Institute for Community and Environment is providing $10,000 for a telemedicine equipped cart. EPHC is also slated as a recipient on UC Davis’s telemedicine grant, for which they’ll receive a second telemedicine cart. In addition, UCD will provide “pediatric emergency room coverage,” allowing EPHC’s ER doctors to access UCD’s expertise at a moment’s notice. This physician time is also grant funded.

A Tahoe-Forest grant funded project will see this hospital as a partnering site for cancer services. This will allow cancer patients to “see” an oncologist from Tahoe Forest via telemedicine, so that they don’t have to travel at a time when that would be most difficult. As a part of this program additional services will be provided to EPHC’s cancer patients by UC Davis physicians.

The county’s poorer and elderly residents would also see great benefit from telemedicine services, which will allow them to stay close to home and still get the health care they need. Schweyer quoted some sobering regional statistics in this regard: “18% of kids live in poverty, 6% don’t own a vehicle, there’s no hospital in Sierra County, and no taxi service or bus system,” making “access of care issues” of high importance for EPHC.

Further, Schweyer is looking into the possibility of having EPHC offer distance academic education courses through the California Telemedicine Network (CTN), partnered with Butte College in Chico. And finally, he said that he’s researching the possibility of utilizing a specialist group out of Bakersfield that would allow for much greater flexibility for patients needing to see a specialist. “If we only have two patients, it’s worth it with telemedicine. With a live specialist, we need more patients.”

“Specialist consults [through telemedicine] have great potential,” Hayes concluded. “Mark’s done a great job.”