Robert Roswell (1998), Director of the Veterans Integrated Service Network/VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8), took the initiative to explore new technologies in telemedicine to expand healthcare delivery alternatives to veterans in the home and other community settings in efforts to address the many challenges it faces to provide its veterans efficient care (Hill & Kobb, 2001, p.5). In 1999, VISN 8 Home and Community Care Service Line launched eight projects and in 2000, added two more projects, to pilot and test the effectiveness of this new technology, in efforts to expand services to over 1000 of veterans within the Network with more, added on a daily basis (Hill & Kobb, 2001, …show more content…
Sanjeev Arora, professor of medicine in hepatology and director of the project at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (Pfeifer, 2012, p.17). Dr. Arora developed the ECHO model to provide videoconferencing that linked specialist from university medical centers with community-based providers in order to provide knowledge, training, and support required to deliver the best possible care to patients (Pfeifer, 2012, p. 17). In a study conducted by the VHA (2010) they found that out of the 3.4 million veterans enrolled in the VA healthcare system, 41% resided in remote and rural areas with limited access to care (Pfeifer, 2012, p. 17). These statistics influenced the VHA to embrace and adopted Project ECHO, modifying it to meet the needs of the VA system. This modification resulted in changing the programs name to SCAN-ECHO (Pfeifer, 2012) and redesigning it to provide specialty consultation via videoconferencing in efforts to improve the quality of specialty care for veterans. The initial goal of SCAN-ECHO (Pfeifer, 2012) was to provide face-to-face contacts between patients and their providers through videoconferencing efforts to address and manage chronic medical issues in nine specialty areas: cardiology, diabetes, endocrinology, HCV infection, liver disease, nephrology, pain