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Dr. Byron Brooks was an Air Force trained flight surgeon
working for NASA. He used wireless technology to monitor pilots'
medical conditions. Most of the diagnosis time was spent listening
to people describe their symptoms. A few years later, as a private
practice primary care physician, Dr. Brooks used telemedicine consults
to serve the needs of patients who called in the middle of the night.
Rather than suggest the patient come in for an office visit a day or two
later, Dr. Brooks used his telemedicine experience to provide an
over-the-phone consult and help the patient right there and then.
In 2000, Dr. Brooks was running a rural Texas hospital in
addition to being a contributing physician to the University of Texas's
telemedicine practice. Dr. Brooks had difficulty recruiting
full-time or part-time psychiatrists who would travel to his rural
hospital to treat patients. UT's telemedicine practice became the
solution for this problem and a close relationship with Dr. Oscar
Boultinghouse was formed.
In 1998, Dr. Boultinghouse assembled a team of
telemedicine specialists (mostly cardiologists) to help drive down the
costs of medical care for the Texas Prison System. He later added
psychiatrists to the telemedicine solution that saved the Texas Prison
System millions. Dr. Boultinghouse used his team of
telemedicine psychiatrists to solve Dr. Brook's rural hospital needs.
The relationship evolved and soon the doctors decided that telemedicine
could be used for primary care medical needs as well as specialty
services. Dr. Brook's vision worked wonderfully and it was widely
incorporated in the University of Texas telemedicine solution.
With the ability to now do primary care, psychiatric
and specialty consults, UT's telemedicine practice grew. The
patient base quickly increased to over 120,000. Within five years
UT's telemedicine solution had saved the state of Texas over $70
million. The doctors were convinced that telemedicine could be
used for the masses and could dramatically drive down the cost of health
care.
From the increasing success of the UT telemedicine
program, Phone-A-Doc was born. Now members of Outlook Health can
utilized this service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. |
