UAMS Awarded $450,000 Telemedicine Grant to Serve Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors
| July 19, 2018 | A new telemedicine program to provide care and services to traumatic brain injury survivors recently received funding through a $450,000 federal grant to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Community Living awarded the three-year grant for The Traumatic Brain Injury State Partnership Program State Funding Opportunity.
The Arkansas Department of Health is contributing $75,000 annually toward the program.
Many TBI survivors living in Arkansas are in rural areas, which are underserved by providers. The new TBI program hopes to be able to get them the follow-up care they need after their initial treatment and recovery.
Among the goals of the program are incorporating telemedicine and other technologies into traumatic brain injury (TBI) services to survivors, raising awareness of clinical and educational services for survivors, caregivers and families in Arkansas and improving communication and coordination of those services through statewide partnerships.
“Telemedicine continues to grow and expand to better serve historically underserved patient populations in Arkansas,” said Curtis Lowery, M.D., medical director of the Center for Distance Health. “As all community physicians and the public continue to gain experience with telemedicine as a tool to improve health care, all of us continue to find new applications for it and patients who can benefit from it.”
UAMS is the only adult Level 1 Trauma Center in Arkansas and the state’s only health sciences university. The Center for Distance Health was established in 2007. It nationally is recognized for its more than 20 telemedicine programs and more than 450-site statewide telemedicine network.
Established in 2013, the state registry of traumatic brain injury survivors documents 1,086 moderate-to-severe TBI survivors. Many survivors living in Arkansas are undocumented though, and 53 percent of survivors are older than 40 and many live in rural areas, which are underserved by providers.
“At the Center for Distance Health, we operate a 24/7 call center for survivors of spinal cord injury, their caregivers and health care providers as well as a trauma rehabilitation program,” said Terri Imus, R.N., project director for the new TBI program. “This new program for survivors of traumatic brain injury will draw on those resources as well as the expertise and deep knowledge base our physicians, nurses and staff have built up over the years.”
Imus experienced a TBI in 1980 when a tree fell on a car in which she was traveling. She recovered with time, though she was debilitated by the injury for years. Imus’ rural, underserved hometown in Arkansas lacked medical resources and that experience gave her an inside look at TBI care within a rural state with few resources.