TelEmergency Home

What is TelEmergency?

The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) developed, implemented, and directs all ongoing operations of the TelEmergency system. This program provides increased access and improved quality of care in participating hospital emergency rooms, as illustrated below.

UMC facilitates the training and placement of specially trained family nurse practitioners (NP) in rural emergency departments who work under direct clinical supervision of emergency physicians at UMC via a telemedicine video link - TelEmergency.

Providing qualified emergency care in rural hospitals with low patient volumes is most often cost prohibitive. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to recruit and retain emergency physicians to these rural areas. TelEmergency alleviates the problems mentioned above by utilizing nurse practitioners, emergency physicians at UMC, and special telemedicine equipment. A nurse practitioner functions under the protocol of the University Emergency Department. The protocols are approved by the participating hospitals' medical staff and the NP is allowed to treat Level 1 and 2 patients (low acuity) without assistance. Levels 3, 4 and 5 (higher to critical acuity) are seen in consultation with a emergency specialist at UMC utilizing state of the art telemedicine technology and the state net T-1 system.

A nurse practitioner will care for a patient in a participating rural Mississippi hospital emergency room with a wall mounted flat screen television and video camera device. The nurse practitioner performs the initial history and physical exam, then dials-up the University's Emergency Department through a dedicated state T-1 line. A Emergency Medicine specialist will appear on the television monitor before the patient and that physician has the ability to manipulate the camera at the distant hospital. The video camera and audio equipment enables the ED physician to visualize and communicate "real-time" with both the NP and the patient. The sophisticated telemedicine setup provides the emergency medicine physician with instant access to inspect the physical and emotional condition of the patient while assisting the NP in managing patient care.