The Upper Midwest Telehealth Resource Center has been instrumental in helping my team understand telehealth and the telehealth landscape for rural clinicians. While our organization has worked in behavioral health, quality improvement, and clinician training for decades, we are new to helping clinicians understand and implement telehealth in their practices. Altarum was awarded a grant in 2019 to help improve adolescent depression in rural areas using telehealth.
The UMTRC is a key partner in this work, and Becky has been a crucial resource and wealth of knowledge for our team since the program’s inception. Not only is she extremely knowledgeable, she has an impressive understanding of the telehealth landscape and has used that knowledge to help increase our team’s capacity to do our jobs well. In June 2020, the UMTRC hosted a 4-day comprehensive training for our staff, which resulted in a significant increase in their knowledge and confidence around telehealth. Since then, the UMTRC continues to be an indispensable resource for our team, answering our questions quickly with the practical, evidence-backed, and digestible expertise we need. Our program has now begun training, and we expect to impact over 1500 rural adolescents in Michigan. I am confident that Altarum will continue to look to UMTRC as a key partner in telehealth for years to come.