Center for Telehealth ACCESS Program

UNM Health's ACCESS Telemedicine Program is available throughout New Mexico, connecting hospitals to on-call expertise in neurology, neurosurgery, and cardiology at UNM. Designed by New Mexico doctors, for New Mexico doctors, our program is based in Albuquerque.

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The ACCESS Program allows doctors statewide to confidently make decisions about patient care, while communities benefit from greater access to specialty consultations. Our goal is to improve health care access in New Mexico by enabling patients to receive exceptional care in local hospitals, close to home.

Not only does ACCESS provide on-call expertise to hospitals across the state, it also engages providers from these hospitals with training and education. Our clincal staff-nurses travel to partnered hospitals to provide education and training workshops focused on our technology and on-call expertise in neurology, neurosurgery, and cardiology.

History of ACCESS

The ACCESS Program was started under a grant in 2015 and included access to neurology and neurosurgery telemedicine consultations. In its first three years nearly 4,000 patients received consultations, providers engaged in 600 hours of training each year, and an estimated $24 million dollars in annual medical costs were eliminat- ed by avoiding unnecessary transfers.

In 2018, when ACCESS Telemedicine became self-sustaining, nearly half of New Mexico hospitals used the system. We have since expanded to include cardiology and are looking into providing other specialties. One of our goals is to provide education to our partners. Providers at partner hospitals can earn CME credits for neurology, neurosurgery, and cardiology care education, at no additional cost. We schedule train- ing sessions that are flexible and work for our partner facilities.