SACRAMENTO – Community hospitals and primary care clinics that want to establish telemedicine programs or improve existing infrastructure are invited to apply for videoconferencing and related telehealth equipment through a new program just launched by UC Davis Health System in Sacramento.

The UC Davis Proposition 1D Telemedicine Equipment Loan Program will provide videoconferencing units and peripheral medical equipment, such as specialized cameras, to health-care sites located within the health system's 33-county service area, which reaches from the Oregon border south to Merced County. To be eligible, partner sites must be a public or non-profit entity and provide care to underserved populations.

Interested health-care providers should submit a letter of interest and complete an online informational survey at www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/cht/proposition_1D between Dec. 9, 2008 and Jan. 6, 2009, at 5 p.m. PST.

The loaned equipment will be available to health-care sites and the communities they serve for an extended period of time. If, for some reason, a site no longer uses or needs telemedicine, or if the site’s status as a health-care provider changes, the equipment-loan program would enable UC Davis to redistribute equipment to other appropriate sites.

Telemedicine uses high-speed data lines linked to video units to connect large urban medical centers with community hospitals and clinics, allowing medical specialists to consult with community physicians and their patients via live, interactive videoconferencing.

The telemedicine program at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, for example, provides direct clinical care to patients at a distance, giving clinics and hospitals throughout the state access to more than 40 medical specialties not readily available in most smaller communities. Since it was established in 1996, UC Davis’ telemedicine program has conducted more than 20,000 telehealth consultations.

Telemedicine technology overcomes the lack of specialty medical care in rural and remote communities by providing a wide range of expertise, from pediatric critical care and radiology to infectious disease, dermatology and psychiatry. UC Davis is one of five UC medical campuses now assessing regional needs and accepting applications from interested health-care providers in its service area.

“We certainly need to produce more doctors, nurses and other health-care providers who are dedicated to practicing medicine in smaller communities,” said Thomas Nesbitt, executive associate dean for UC Davis Health System and director of its Center for Health and Technology, which is coordinating the equipment loan program. “But we also need to take advantage of the innovations in telecommunications so that highly trained specialists at academic medical centers like UC Davis can share their expertise with other clinics and hospitals. By approving Proposition 1D in 2006, California voters helped ensure that the most advanced health-care expertise eventually will be able to be delivered anywhere, at anytime, in the state.”

Following the close of the application process in January, UC Davis plans to review each submission and make recommendations to the UC Office of the President, which will make the final determination about equipment distribution to each site. It is anticipated that by the end of 2009 as many as 25 sites will receive a telemedicine equipment loan, along with installation support and training from UC Davis technical experts.

{mos_sb_discuss:2}