Home Telemedicine
Sunrise County HomeCare Services, a division of RMCL, with its partner, the VNA of Aroostook, initiated in 1998 a major telemedicine project funded by about $1.3 million from the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This is the first demonstration in Maine of home health care telemedicine.
Small interactive telemedicine units operating over regular telephone lines allow homebound elders to receive quality health care and mental health services from their homes, with the goal of improving health care and reducing institutionalization and health system costs. These units dial into a central server, located in Lubec,
and upload medical information that then becomes available to that patients provider. If any of the data is deamed out of bounds, the provider is notified.
This project has also placed about 20 high-speed Polycom telemedicine units in Aroostook County. This network also received from the Office of Rural Health Outreach (HRSA), in May 2000, a federal grant of about $600,000 over three years to demonstrate mental health services through telemedicine technology in home care.