The western part of Texas is full of lots of beautiful, rolling plains with wide open land occupied primarily by. Because so much of this part of the Lone Star State is empty, there are not many hospitals or emergency rooms in the area. This means whenever a resident on this side of the state needs medical attention, they have to deal with long drives to the nearest facility. This is fine for regular appointments, but in emergency situations, this could be a matter of life or death.

A new program based at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center proposes a possible solution to help ease the risk of the lack of medical facilities in emergency situations. The program is getting political support as well, as state representative Drew Darby is spearheading a house bill to pass the program into law.

The program would allow for telemedicine connections between doctors and emergency vehicles so that first responders would be able to work with a licensed doctor to get a patient’s proper care started when on the long route to the nearest hospital.

With the use of video calls, the doctors would be able to assess the patient’s condition while they go to the emergency room and the paramedics could get more specific in the treatment.

The bill is getting a good amount of support, especially from those in the medical community. The Executive Vice President for Rural and Community Health at Texas Tech University, Billy Philips, says this will greatly help in the healthcare for the state. This communication will help emergency service technicians to give proper care to patients in a timely manner so that they don’t worsen in condition when going to a hospital.

They have already begun testing the program and are seeing the positive results they were expecting. In the first trial run of the program, they saw a reduction in fatalities by a third. It did take a little bit of work at first to get all the emergency service providers to become willing to work with the program, but over time most have become fully on board. Other parts of Texas already have similar programs, as do other states that face similar issues in their rural areas.

Overall, the program has proved to be successful, so it is now up to the state government leaders to pass the program into formal law to allow as many to reap the benefits of the program as possible.