Doctors on screen coming to Plains Area

Wait time to see a psychiatrist or clinician at Plains Area Mental Health Center could be shortened thanks to a new teleconferencing system.

It's called Telehealth and it will allow a physician to be in one location while a client is is in another.

"By giving us more face-to-face time with a psychiatrist, it should reduce patient wait time, the time it takes to get an appointment," said Patrick Schmitz, Plains Area Mental Health Center's executive director.

Plains Area received a $212,390 grant from Community Reinvestment Funding through the Department of Human Services in Iowa.

The grant will provide Telehealth teleconferencing units for all five Plains Area locations -- Le Mars, Ida Grove, Storm Lake, Cherokee and Orange City.

The remaining two units will be placed with physicians that Plains Area contracts with in Sioux City and Sioux Falls, S.D., Schmitz said.

"The physician and client can see and hear each other in real time and the assessment can take place," Schmitz said. "Basically we can achieve what we can achieve here. In our world, most of what we do is talk anyway."

Part of the grant will pay for actual service provided to Medicaid patients and about $54,000 will supply the seven teleconferencing units, Schmitz said.

"The grant was provided to use with Medicaid patients, but we can use it (Telehealth) with any other client whose insurance will pay for it," Schmitz said. "They will pay for it just as if a doctor and patient were sitting in the same room."

Schmitz said major insurance companies have indicated they will cover the service.

Telehealth is intended to improve access to psychiatric services as there is a shortage of psychiatrists throughout Iowa, Schmitz said.

"As we look to the future and the ever decreasing availability of psychiatrists in our area, you have to start looking at ways that help reduce the barriers," Schmitz said.

At each spot where a patient is using the teleconferencing unit, a staff member will be there to help operate the unit and to help with medication adjustments and other services, Schmitz said.

"It will benefit us by increasing the access to psychiatrists for our clients," he said. "It will allow us to utilize more physician time as opposed to some of our physicians having to travel an hour to two hours. They can be seeing patients instead of driving."

In addition, Telehealth will allow access to specialists that may not be employed directly by Plains Area Mental Health Center.

"The uses for it are pretty limitless," he said.

Telehealth works through a high definition television, camera and microphone that are hooked up to a processing unit of a small laptop computer that is the size of a piece of paper, about 1 inch thick, Schmitz said.

"We will probably mount at least several of them on very secure carts so they can be transported from room to room as need be," Schmitz said.

He said he hopes to have Telehealth services up and running no later than Feb. 1, 2009.

The grant is a one-time opportunity and the implementation of services and care has to be done within six months.

"We have to serve so many Medicaid folks in this process," Schmitz said. "After the grant runs out, then we start to bill just normal insurance rates."