Director of Nursing, Mark Schweyer, reported on the progress he\u2019s made in EPHC\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s telemedicine grant, for which they\u2019ll receive a second telemedicine cart. In addition, UCD will provide \u201cpediatric emergency room coverage,\u201d allowing EPHC\u2019s ER doctors to access UCD\u2019s expertise at a moment\u2019s notice. This physician time is also grant funded. <\/p>\n
A Tahoe-Forest grant funded project will see this hospital as a partnering site for cancer services. This will allow cancer patients to \u201csee\u201d an oncologist from Tahoe Forest via telemedicine, so that they don\u2019t 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\u2019s cancer patients by UC Davis physicians.<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s 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: \u201c18% of kids live in poverty, 6% don\u2019t own a vehicle, there\u2019s no hospital in Sierra County, and no taxi service or bus system,\u201d making \u201caccess of care issues\u201d of high importance for EPHC.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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. \u201cIf we only have two patients, it\u2019s worth it with telemedicine. With a live specialist, we need more patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSpecialist consults [through telemedicine] have great potential,\u201d Hayes concluded. \u201cMark\u2019s done a great job.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director of Nursing, Mark Schweyer, reported on the progress he\u2019s made in EPHC\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}