Our goal is to provide tools that will allow our staff to be more efficient and effective. It has been such a success that Telemedicine magazine in 1997 listed ODRC as the third largest user of telemedicine in the country, ranking it only behind Digital Care, a hospital system in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, which provides medical services to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. According to Wilkinson, telemedicine allows ODRC to provide remote medical services to prisoners. From the prison's clinic, a health care professional presents the patient and operates the scopes and cameras that transmits the video images in real-time to a doctor at another location. The advantages of telemedicine, Wilkinson says, are many.
Prisoners receive care without incurring the cost of escorted hospital visits.
Telemedicine gives the prison access to a wider range of outside medical sources and specialized doctors. And, telemedicine provides a visual record of the visit, ensures the safety of the doctors, and reduces the potential for escape. This is important, he notes, since it was recently reported that more than 50 escape attempts occurred in this country from offsite medical facilities in one 12-month period. We can do consultations, post-operative medical reviews, and routine doctor's visits. We can read x-rays, or zero in and magnify certain areas of the body so the doctor can get a very clear picture.