Ruleville, Miss. – The seemingly insignificant act of reading the label on a soda can and then focusing to read the numbers on the can’s bar code only becomes important when put into the context of saving lives.

So when medical staff at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., trained the lens of their remote camera on the soda can 120 miles away in the emergency room of North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville, they knew they had the vision to bring specialized, often lifesaving healthcare to the rural regions of the Mississippi Delta.

“To be able to see is huge,” Joanie Perkins, director of practice management at North Sunflower, likes to say. “To be able to see well is better.”
North Sunflower Medical Center is one of the growing number of rural hospitals that now have access to better care through the innovative Telemedicine Program, a partnership between the University Medical Center and the Delta Health Alliance. A dozen rural Delta hospitals are expected to be part of the new effort within the next three years.

Say a burn victim in critical condition is wheeled into North Sunflower’s emergency room. Once on the table, a mounted camera controlled by medical staff at UMC in Jackson focuses on the injuries while doctors, as well as the patient, speak to one another remotely. Program software analyzes information about the patient’s condition, alerting physicians if the patient goes into cardiac arrest, for instance. Decisions on the best treatment or whether to transport the patient to another hospital are made on the spot.

And just because a hospital such as North Sunflower is situated in a more rural part of the state, “doesn’t mean we don’t get the same type of cases that the larger metropolitan hospitals get,” said Perkins.

“Can you imagine getting hurt in Ruleville, Mississippi?” she asked. “In the middle of this oppressive poverty? So to be brought into a room and have the best specialists from UMC to back up our physicians, with an expert looking over your shoulder, makes the patient feel so much better.”
With stroke patients, said Perkins, the sequence of care is carefully choreographed to ensure the best possible outcomes:

• Once at the rural hospital, the patient undergoes a CAT Scan.
• UMC is notified.
• The CAT Scan is accessed remotely and read, along with the patient’s history.
• Doctors determine whether the patient is a candidate for the highly effective clot-busting drug, tPA.
• At the same time the drug is administered, a helicopter from UMC is dispatched to take the patient to Jackson.

But the Telemedicine Program is not limited to emergency care. It also offers help to those in need of psychiatric services in an area woefully underserved. Patients can go to their local community mental health center in the Delta and, from an office-type room equipped with high-definition video equipment, can “meet” with specialists at UMC. Even a patient’s body language can be seen and assessed by the doctor.

“The continuity of care is there from the moment the doctors put their ‘eyes’ on our patients through the lens,” said Perkins. She credits the Delta Health Alliance for the program’s success. “We wouldn’t have this without them. They are the people who have made this a reality. They are making sure that what they wanted to happen has happened with the funds provided. They are allowing us to provide the kind of care the people of the Delta need and deserve.”