On Nov. 29 New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM, joined the U.S. Senate in unanimously voting to approve legislation which would spread the UNM-created model of improving access to health care in rural areas nationwide.
“We have already seen how the Project ECHO model can improve health outcomes in rural areas of New Mexico and throughout the United States by providing an innovative and affordable way to train local physicians in more specialized fields to treat diseases that they were not previously trained to treat,” Udall said.
The ECHO Act expands the model by requiring Health and Human Services to actively seek areas where it can be implemented and provides funding opportunities to do so, Udall said.
Despite a quarter of the U.S. population living in rural area, only 10 percent of medical practitioners work in these regions. The primary goal of ECHO is to bring specialized training to these areas that are in need, which Udall said would be of great benefit to the country as a whole.
Because so few doctors work in rural communities, people often don't get specialized care, and chronic disease rates are higher in these areas. By expanding Project ECHO to remote regions that lack specialized physicians, more doctors will be trained to treat the diseases affecting their community and bring these rates down and save lives, Udall said.
“They often feel isolated and lack the support they need to do their jobs the best they can,” Udall said of the obstacles facing rural doctors today. “This model brings doctors together from all over by video conference so they have the opportunity to work together and learn from each other without having to be in the same place. This will help doctors in more isolated areas access support and guidance from their colleagues and will help us retain physicians in rural communities.”
Sanjeev Arora, a professor at the University of New Mexico, played a big part in the development of the ECHO project at UNM, and in its implementation across the state.
“We owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Arora who faced a serious health care challenge head-on by developing Project ECHO,” Udall said
By seeing how rural communities were struggling with a Hepatitis C outbreak and a shortage of doctors trained to treat it Arora found a way to give rural practitioners the tools they needed to manage these complex cases, Udall said.
“This is the kind of innovation that stems from a community coming together to create a solution that best meets its needs,” he said. “I'm so glad it has gained the recognition to become a national example of how to deliver quality, affordable health care to rural areas in need.”
Now that the ECHO Act has passed to integrate the model into existing programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the initiative will require HHS and the Health Resources and Services Administration to analyze the model and its ability to improve patient care and provider education, Udall said.
After this, it will then report the findings to Congress to gauge its long-term effects and impact, as well as continued funding.
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The ECHO model has already been used in a limited scope in 30 other states, Arora said. Colleges such as the University of Washington and the University of Utah have also replicated the model.
The ECHO Act, through replication across the United States, will benefit, consumers, doctors and nurses by raising quality and lowering costs, Arora said. He also touched on the international goals of the model.
“Our role at the University of New Mexico is to teach other universities to do it and we have a goal to touch the lives of 1 billion people by 2025,” he said.
The passing of the ECHO Act was a group effort by Udall and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, House members Michelle Lujan Grisham, Ben Lujan and University officials.
As for getting involved with the project now, there are many opportunities for volunteering, internships as well as job positions for UNM alumni.
UNM students or professors who are interested in helping the success of the project ECHO or pursuing other projects in the medical field to help benefit New Mexico and the United States should take a cue from Arora, Udall said.
“If you see a problem in your community and you have an idea on how to solve it, give it a try — nobody knows the community better than someone who is involved, witnessing the challenges firsthand and interacting with the people those challenges affect,” Udall said.
The first issue is to get involved and understand the health care system in the United States, Arora said, which he thinks has been underperforming, and very expensive, while not producing quality outcomes.
“There is tremendous opportunity to improve it, from the perspective that people can become a doctor and other health professionals, while also simultaneously working on the system level representing their perspective in the development of new health care policies within the counties and within the states,” he said.
Arora said, currently, the U.S. spends $3.2 trillion on health care a year, and needs to get a better bang for its buck.
“The opportunity for improvement is huge,” he said.
Nichole Harwood is a news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nolidoli1.
