Telepsychiatry Program
The University of Texas Medical Branch’s division of Community-based Mental Health Services (UTMB/CBMHS) offers behavioral health services throughout Galveston County – in four separate school districts and with various community partners. Our team will work with you, your child, and/or your family to analyze the meaning of behaviors and symptoms causing distress. Our goal with each patient/child/family is to develop and customize a comprehensive treatment plan based on current scientific evidence to help relieve suffering and improve lives.
UTMB/CBMHS is a group of highly dedicated mental health professionals who use current, evidence-based practices. Using individual and collective courage and wisdom, providers assist patients in seizing their own potential to achieve improved well-being.
Telepsychiatry
Help is more accessible than ever before. Since 2006, with the assistance of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and seven local family philanthropies, the school-based Tele-Mental Health project has addressed these critical needs by putting in place an innovative infrastructure for behavioral health in Galveston’s schools.
Using telehealth – advanced two-way videoconferencing tools along with electronic medical records designed to connect medical specialists with underserved populations – we can bring the expertise of behavioral health specialists into the schools, without the expense of maintaining a physical behavioral care presence. Along with our co-location with the Teen Health Center, we have built comprehensive referral networks in the schools, with teachers and administrators helping identify those students with mental health issues.
The concept of providing mental health services in the public schools is not itself novel. The innovation is not in what we’re delivering, but how we’re delivering it. By using telehealth to link the Teen Health Centers with psychiatry faculty of one of our country’s oldest and largest academic health centers, we can reach more adolescents who are underserved by the existing mental health system. Telepsychiatry and tele-counseling services help us address crisis situations quickly and efficiently.
Electronic Medical Records
An electronic medical record (EMR) is a vital component in effective telepsychiatry. Medical records are a challenge for an on-site medical practice, but the added variable of distance in telemedicine makes an EMR a necessity. Studies have repeatedly shown that paper records are costly, cumbersome and easily misplaced. On the other hand, an EMR is a rapid and efficient way to preserve medical information, providing the medical record communication necessary for telemedicine and generating databases needed for effective research. Using the EMR eliminates the identifying and pulling of paper medical records, hand extracting necessary research information and then typing that information into a separate computer system for analysis.
For our effort we have partnered with ClearHealth for our EMR/health information exchange (EMR/HIE). It keeps a complete summary of all patient problems, allergies, medications, laboratory results, vital signs and other pertinent information. It also stores and organizes typed and scanned image records for each patient. This proven EMR solution operates daily supporting the records for just under one million patients managed in other clinical programs and is recognized as one of the largest and most successful paperless medical record systems in the country. The program has been evaluated extensively and complies with all HIPAA and JCAHO standards for medical records handling.