doctors so I coordinate care with the physicians that were close to me there. That's really the model we have tried to do. As in our Hermitage location we just had two recent Kathy McNutt, Dr. McNutt is and David Bright is a physician's assistant that's local. But what the contracts allow us to do is for the contractor to hire physicians that are local physicians that know the local system and can coordinate care with those local physicians and I that's a great way to take care of veterans because a lot of veterans do have dual care which have an outside provider and they get care from the VA. So that helps us coordinate that care between two. MS. CLOSKEY: So the how do they feel working in this forum? MR. FLORIAN: I'm to answer that, but I wanted to piggy back on something that Dr. Kruczek said that is very important in terms of trying to make them feel like they are 9 part of the team. We regularly have team meetings where we either visit them on site or give them the opportunity to come to Pittsburgh. The contracted staffs are all oriented by staff here at Butler. They go through a week-long orientation where they learn all the same things
they deal with counseling, helping the veterans with transition and working with psychotherapy type things. So the social workers that are out there do a great job at two of our sites -- and I know that Dr. Kruczek will touch on this, as well -- we take out podiatrists to actually perform podiatry a couple days a month and take care of the veterans' foot needs. Then we'll talk later, I'm sure, about telehealth and how we deliver other specialty care via the new technology. MS. CLOSKEY: Tell us a little bit about the specialty care. DR. KRUCZEK: It's good, not only do we have -- we provide what services we can at the CBOCs; but then if it's not available at the CBOCs, they come here to Butler for specialty care. We have many specialty cares here in Butler, audiology for hearings aids, we have eye 16 care, both ophthalmologists and optometrists for glasses. We have podiatry here. We have cardiology, neurology, so that they can come here to get specialty care. Now, there is some specialty care that we don't here in Butler. These are more specialists, neurosurgeons, to have surgery
gives me a ready source to be able to print off things to take to my outside provider, if necessary. So that thing is far more than just an e-mail system now. It's a repository of information that a veteran can reach to at any time. Other forms of telehealth that we're really excited out there, in addition to My HealtheVet, we've got three modalities, we've got the clinical video teleconferencing which is the traditional face to face over a camera where you have a provider on one side and a veteran on the other. We also have the store and forward technology that Dr. Kruczek mentioned where you'll take an image, either a dermatology image or an individual of a diabetic's retina to send in or a variety of other things, and you'll send them through the electronic waves, if you will, to be evaluated. Then we also have home telehealth which is a program of its own right, but 22 coordinating with the primary care providers allows it also to be plugged into the CBOC. This is where you have cameras, blood pressure monitors and other things located at the