Health care closer to home

This time last year, Marathon, Texas, residents had no health care services in their community. A 30 mile one-way drive to Alpine, Texas, was the closest health care available. The distance wasn’t as challenging as scheduling; residents often had to wait months for an appointment.

Today, it’s a much different story.

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) in Odessa, Texas, supports a telehealth clinic at the Marathon Health Center, bringing access to primary care closer to home and allowing residents to receive care often on the same day.

Rural areas, like Marathon, located in Brewster County — the largest geographically in Texas — struggle with a patient base that is too small to support a health care provider financially, and the isolation of practice makes it less appealing for providers who are not from a rural area or who have not trained in one.

TTUHSC is among the pioneers in telehealth delivery. In 1990, the first consult connected a primary care physician in Alpine, Texas, and the parents of a newborn with a pediatric clinical faculty specialist, saving the baby’s life. Since then, TTUHSC’s leadership has continued to enterprise opportunities by successfully collaborating with rural communities to implement telehealth services and expand access to care. Additionally, the university’s telehealth services are accredited by an independent third party through the URAC’s Telehealth Accreditation Program.

In this 88th Texas Legislature, TTUHSC has an exceptional item request for $6.75 million per year, $13.5 million for the biennium, to establish the Institute for Telehealth Technology and Innovation. The comprehensive institute will utilize telehealth hubs at our Amarillo, Lubbock and Odessa campuses to support health care delivery and leverage the expertise and resources of our world-class clinical and research faculty to accelerate progress in this critical field based on our existing platforms of delivery of care, academics and research

Access to care: Traditional health care delivery models pull patient care and services away from communities like Marathon into urban centers. We’re taking an innovative approach to telehealth delivery by collaborating with our region’s health care and hospital partners to sustain existing services in the local community and support needs for specialty care and chronic disease management. One example of this innovative model is the delivery of direct counseling and telepsychiatry through collaboration with independent school districts. Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine support allows TTUHSC to implement this valuable program in 132 school districts.

Education and training: TTUHSC offers a one-of-a-kind training program through our FiT Lab (Frontiers in Telemedicine) in Lubbock. With a focus on competency-based learning, this program sets the standard for telemedicine training nationwide. Coursework includes online training, hands-on simulated education, and an objective-structured clinical examination. Additionally, we focus on training telemedicine technicians, an emerging field of work in adopting telemedicine in rural and remote communities.

Family Medicine Rural Residency program, based on our Odessa campus, uniquely prepares residents to practice full-spectrum care in rural communities. TTUHSC has six rural community site partners where residents serve, with support via telehealth links. Two residents have remained in the rural communities where they trained.

Research and development: Telehealth is a rapidly evolving field that requires ongoing research and development to optimize the efficacy of its use. As an academic health research institute, TTUHSC can facilitate and support research in telehealth through an innovative exploration of new technologies, protocols and best practices that will improve telehealth services, examining clinical efficacy and health care outcomes. We also look to partner with experts in policy development and support access needs, such as expanding broadband access in rural areas to ensure telehealth services are widely available and accessible to all who need them.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, the health care industry cannot be the exception. Given the proven benefits of telehealth, advancing these services is a viable means to expand health care access. Building on its expertise and experiences in telehealth, TTUHSC is poised to prepare health care providers to practice in this increasingly technological ecosystem. Through the Institute for Telehealth Technology and Innovation, we can improve access to high-quality and cost-effective health care services for residents of communities like Marathon across our state.