Telemedicine Connects Rural Tennessee to Modern Healthcare
CENTENNIAL, CO—December 3, 2013. There’s a bright red Toyota Camry pulled off Highway 23 in Northeastern Tennessee. Inside, a woman is in the backseat, pulling her iPad out of her backpack and logging into a videoconference where she’ll create a game plan for the week with the rest of her team back in Nashville. Welcome to Cindy Siler’s “other office.”
Being on the road is a huge part of Siler’s job as Deputy Director at Tennessee Rural Partnership, nonprofit focused on maximizing access to primary care in rural and underserved areas of Tennessee by connecting clinicians with communities across the state.
To stay connected while travelling to areas look like they did back in 1913, Siler relies on 2013 technology. Today’s staff meeting is being held as a videoconference, thanks to the secure, “medical-grade” tools Tennessee Rural Partnership has access to as part of their Virtual Care Works membership.
Virtual Care Works offers a variety of communication tools and technologies that medical professionals to converse with colleagues and patients via videoconference, exchange medical data and images via secure email or text and collaborate across a secure, HIPAA-compliant network.
“To accomplish our mission we must travel the entire state. Therefore, it is an absolute must that we connect staff in the field to our in-house meetings. This platform allowed us to do that with minimum effort on a high quality secure line,” said Siler.
Tennessee Rural Partnership also uses the VCW Platform to conduct some of its Board Meetings. “Board Members come from medical schools & practices all across the state. We’ve heard that the Board Members prefer it to some of the other teleconference services available because the VCW Platform provides clear video and audio, is much easier to hook up, and offers the highest level of security,” remarked Siler.
The organization is hopeful to expand the use of the technology to other parts of the organization in the near future. “I’ve already had other departments asking me about it,” said Siler
About Virtual Care Works
Virtual Care Works (VCW) provides secure, “medical-grade” communications solutions for health care providers. The VCW platform includes tools to converse with colleagues and patients via videoconference, exchange medical data and images via secure email or text and collaborate across a secure, HIPAA-compliant network. Healthcare organizations of all types and size benefit from the safety and security VCW offers, and use the VCW platform to avoid the significant fines ($10k per violation, up to $1.5m annually) and penalties that come with mishandling health information. VCW partners with other industry leaders such as Dell, Juniper Networks, Level 3 Communications and Vidyo to provide their medical-grade communications platform. VCW has members nationwide and is headquartered outside of Denver, CO.
About Tennessee Rural Partnership
Tennessee Rural Partnership is a private non-profit organization established in 2006 to address the increasing challenges of providing healthcare in rural and underserved areas across the state. TRP is funded through contracts with the four Tennessee medical schools with primary care residency programs: the University of Tennessee, Meharry Medical College, East Tennessee State University, and Vanderbilt University. In 2012 TRP became an operating subsidiary of Tennessee Hospital Association, enabling us to expand our goal to maximize access to primary care in rural and underserved areas of Tennessee. TRP has successfully placed 70+ primary care providers in Tennessee communities.