Medical care and education improved by telemedicine

The Nevada Telemedicine Project helped a geriatric psychiatrist in Elko have a video consultation with a patient located in Yerington last week.

Meanwhile, graduate students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who are working toward their Master's of Education in School Counseling fulfilled clinical requirements through video counseling sessions with students and young adults in Elko, White Pine and Humboldt counties.

The Nevada Telemedicine Project, which first came online in 1999 at medical hospitals or clinical sites in Reno, Las Vegas and Hawthorne, has since expanded to include about 55 rural and urban sites throughout the state, says Gerald Ackerman, director of the University of Nevada School of Medicine Outreach Center in Elko.

In addition to providing clinical services to Nevada's rural communities, the project also provides access to higher education. The video system allowed prospective nurses in Elko to pursue nursing degrees at UNLV or University of Nevada, Reno, before Great Basin College offered bachelor's degrees in nursing, Ackerman says.

"We have seen nothing but growth, and it is obviously beneficial as more specialty services and continued education opportunities become available to rural communities," Ackerman says.

The Nevada Telemedicine Project is part of the Nevada System of Higher Education's NevadaNet program, which runs video units at more than 200 sites statewide, Ackerman says.

"The system has allowed nurses in Elko to get higher education degrees when there wasn't a bachelors' program offered in Elko, which helps us offer a higher level of nursing care," he says. "The compressed video systems have allowed us to conduct patient consultations and diagnostics that were not previously possible."

The system was funded in part through USDA Rural Development's Distance Learning Telemedicine grant and loan program. Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant applications provide access to education, training and health care resources for rural Nevadans in communities with populations of less than 20,000 residents.