International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications Table 3: Study sites/population of interest. COPC Sites (14) (1) Castro-Mission Health Center (2) Chinatown Health Center (3) Curry Senior Center (4) Housing and Urban Health Clinic UCSF Medical Specialty Division Clinics at SFGH (9) (1) Breast (2) Cardiology (3) Endocrinology (4) Gastroenterology (5) Maxine Hall Health Center (5) Hepatology (6) Ocean Park Health Center (6) Liver (7) Potrero Hill Health Center (8) Silver Avenue Family Health Center (9) Southeast Health Center (10) STD Clinic on 7th Street station (PEP) (11) Special Programs for Youth (12) Tom Waddell Health Center (13) Transgender Clinic (14) Women’s Health Center within the SFDPH and UCSF network for appropriate followup. Future work in this area should focus on the under- standing of these types of services for telemedicine as supplementary to the provision of direct medical care, the role of the Advanced Practice Nurse in the provision of educational, and initial point of care specialty counselling for patients requiring a higher level of care and the inclusion of the perception of the patient’s voice as well as the assessment of the providers acceptance of telemedicine technology. In addition, the longitudinal cost eﬀective analyses of using the telemedicine approach as a modality would eventually assist in the creation of a business plan for opportunities to scale up and spread these services to other safety-net settings similar to the San Francisco context. Appendices A. Study Sites/Population of Interest For more details see Table 3. B. Written Informed Consent Study Title. Increasing Access to Specialty Care Services in the San Francisco Healthcare Safety-net: Determining the Needs and Priorities for Telemedicine Services from the Provider Perspective My name is Ken Russell Coelho and I am a graduate student researcher in the Global Health Sciences Division at the University of California, San Francisco. I am currently working on my graduate ﬁeldwork and Masters of Science thesis under the direction of Principal Investigator, Dr. Hal 11 Yee, MD, Ph.D. and faculty advisor, Dr Wayne Steward, MPH, PhD, and would like to invite you to take part in my research study, which looks determining the needs and priorities for telemedicine services from the provider perspective with the goal of improving the delivery and access of specialty care to uninsured and Medicaid patients using the San Francisco public health. Research studies include only people who choose to take part. Please take your time to make your decision about participating, and discuss your decision with others if you wish. If you have any questions, you may ask the researchers of the study. You are being asked to take part in this study since you have been identiﬁed as a key informant Medical Direc- tor/Clinical Chief at the aﬃliated COPC clinics, and/or the UCSF medical specialty divisions. The purpose of the study is to improve access and quality of specialty care services in San Francisco. About 30 clinical providers will take part in this study from a wide variety of primary and specialty care services in the San Francisco Healthcare Safety-net. If you agree to take part in this research, you will be inter- viewed for 30 minutes at the location of your clinic/hospital oﬃce at a time of your convenience. The session will include your participation wherein you will be asked about your experience in the delivery of specialty care to uninsured and Medicaid patients in your practice. A sound recording of your conversation will be made. We will not use your name or identifying information when we make the copy. However, responses from this interview may be shared with the leadership team at San Francisco General Hospital with the ultimate goal of improving care and services oﬀered. Care will be taken to eliminate your name from the transcripts; although worthy comments which require prompt follow up will be identiﬁed to the SFGH leadership team. After the interview, a computer transcription of the inter- view will be created. The sound recording will then be stored in a locked ﬁle. Each person in this study will have their own code number so that no one other than myself and the co- investigators of the study will know who you are in my notes. The key to the code of names will be kept in a separate locked ﬁle and will be destroyed following completion of this study. Unless prior arrangements are made, the entire study will be conducted at the location of your clinic/hospital oﬃce and at a time of your convenience After the interview, you will be informed of an oppor- tunity to participate in a brief survey which will be emailed to you in 4–6 weeks by the Principal Investigator of the study. The survey will take about 5 minutes to complete. The purpose of the survey is to identify key telemedicine services that would beneﬁt from the use of infrastructural funds to enhance specialty care for uninsured and Medicaid patients in the San Francisco public health system. There are no known risks to you from taking part in this research, and no foreseeable direct beneﬁt to you either. However, it is hoped that the research will beneﬁt the scien- tiﬁc community by providing greater understanding of the use of this new approach in low resource healthcare settings and assist in further enhancements and development.