strated promising outcomes for inmates in Utah’s State Penitentiary who qualify for speech therapy intervention.
Methods: Recent treatment plans and outcomes of inmates
in the Utah State Penitentiary who were experiencing aphasia
or apraxia of speech were reviewed.
Results: The inmates demonstrated significant improvements in all communication aspects and weekly progression
towards the established plan of care. Goals were developed
based on the inmate’s functional communication needs, enabling frequent practice and use of strategies outside of the
treatment sessions.
Conclusions: The use of meaningful communication strategies and goals encouraged increased participation and carryover of learned information. By making the communication
targets individually relevant, prison employees could assist
with addressing the inmates’ goals outside of treatment sessions. Telespeech is a promising resource for Utah inmates as
therapy can be administered directly in the inmates’ environment where their communication needs are necessary. The
presence of healthcare workers in the treatment rooms during the therapy sessions assisted with carryover and further
training for prison staff, inmates and cell mates. Direct intervention of inmates’ communication breakdowns within their
environment facilitated progression towards more meaningful communication skills.
health accreditation program is to promulgate standards for
the practice of medicine and other health professions, consumer education, and care coordination facilitated through telecommunications.
URAC's standards were developed through a comprehensive,
iterative dialogue among the content experts. URAC engaged
telehealth providers from universities, large healthcare systems, national and regional leaders among telehealth enterprises, payers and those working in regional telehealth centers. Participants included: Carena, the Great Plains Telehealth Resource & Assistance Center, George Washington
University Medical Faculty Associates, HCA, Humana, Mercy
Virtual, Optum, Teladoc, and the University of Kentucky. Once
consensus was reached on an initial draft, URAC invited public
comment from stakeholders throughout health-care including
consumer representatives and regulators.
Each iterative phase of the development of these standards
led to refinement of the standards so that the perspectives of
stakeholder groups from health care in general, telehealth
providers, consumers, payers, and policymakers are embedded into the final accreditation program that emerged.
26. Southern New Mexico’s
Adolescent Services Telemedicine Project
(ConneXions)
25. Establishing National Standards for
Telehealth Through an Iterative Dialogue
Linda Summers, PhD and Conni DeBlieck, DNP
Deborah Smith, MS, RN-BC1,2 and Aaron Turner-Phifer2
Background: Health services and education are both critical
issues in rural economic development and can be delivered
over the infrastructure developed for either one. An alliance
of medical, technical and management expertise would enable the service providers to operate in a well-managed technological and administrative environment leading to a sustainable rural telehealth system. The lack of affordable broadband could be compensated for by connecting existing and
proposed telehealth networks to create a network of networks that will provider broader access and increase connectivity. The Southern New Mexico Adolescent Services Telemedicine Project (ConneXions) is one such network.
1
Redfine Health and 2URAC
Rapid growth of telehealth has created variability between
providers of telehealth services. URAC launched the first independent Telehealth Accreditation program March 30, 2016.
The purpose of the accreditation is to enable telehealth provider organizations to verify that they are adhering to the
highest standards and best practices that foster quality and
consumer protection.
The proposed poster session will focus on the use of an iterative dialogue in the standards development process to establish national performance standards for telehealth practices.
This development process will be described in a manner that
demonstrates the impact of broad stakeholder contributions
in policy formation and deployment.
URAC was approached by a group of telehealth providers interested in setting national standards for quality telehealth
services. This led URAC to collaborate with an expert panel of
telehealth providers to construct the first independent telehealth accreditation standards. The goal of this new tele-
New Mexico State University
Method: ConnecXions endeavors to address these barriers
through telemedicine. ConnecXions has interlinked four
school based health centers in two school districts and one
juvenile detention center with three consultation sites permitting efficient flow of medical information and increasing the
availability of mental health services for adolescents at each
of the five sites. Access to medical and mental healthcare is
the primary goal of the program. Advances in telecommunications enable the five sites to achieve this goal by developing a
more flexible and cost effective approach to building an inter-
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