UNMH expands rural health care accessibility with telehealth booths

In eastern New Mexico lies Fort Sumner, a town 2½ hours away from Albuquerque with a population of less than 1,000 people, three doctor’s offices and no hospital for miles.

For residents of the rural town, it’s often a six-hour round trip to see a specialist. But a new project by the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, telehealth booths, aims to bring those in rural New Mexico more access to health care than ever before.

Telehealth booths are free, private and soundproof standalone rooms equipped with a computer that allows people to schedule a virtual appointment with a doctor. Three have been placed in rural, local libraries across New Mexico since February — in Aztec, Mescalaro and Gallup — with an additional five to 10 expected to be placed by the end of the year. UNMH has not yet confirmed the locations of the additional booths.

“We were blessed to be chosen as one of the first four libraries to be awarded a telehealth booth,” said Melanie Ratliff, director of the Fort Sumner library, which will have a telehealth booth ready for use by August. “This will be a significant change for the folks in our community that are making a lot of trips out of town for medical appointments.”

Ratliff said that while the telehealth booths won’t entirely prevent trips to the doctor, patients may only have to travel once for an appointment, and then they can review the results with doctors virtually, saving time and money with a quick trip to the library versus a six-hour travel day.

Each booth costs roughly $12,000, and was funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Telemedicine & Distance Learning Grant program, said Deirdre Caparoso, outreach and community engagement librarian in the UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center.

Caparoso said that the booths are designed to accommodate two to three individuals and are equipped with a ramp for wheelchair accessibility.

“That’s huge, because in New Mexico, so many New Mexican families are multigenerational, and many people are not comfortable seeing a provider on their own,” she said. “The booths had to house more than one person, and they had to be fully accessible to all populations.”

Each library will have its own policies on booth usage, so visitors should contact their library to learn how to reserve it. Library users wishing to schedule a telehealth appointment will need to contact their provider. Once the appointment is set, guests can log in to their health portals online for their scheduled visit.

Telehealth booths are not just for doctor’s appointments, though. Guests can use the private space for job interviews, virtual classes, or even record a podcast. The Fort Sumner Library will be reconstructing their library for the telehealth booth, and plan to use it as a small radio so they can broadcast to residents.

“One of our biggest challenges is getting teenagers back in the library, but they are interested in social media content,” Ratliff said. “We are hoping to use that as an incentive for teenagers to get in here and use the booth. There’s a lot of potential.”