Establishing a Telepsychiatry Consultation Practice in Rural Georgia for Primary Care Physicians

Abstract

One approach to solving mental health care disparity issues in rural areas is by establishing a telepsychiatry consultation practice for children, in which a psychiatrist sees a child via videoconferencing for a limited number of sessions and then provides a treatment plan to that child's primary care physician and family. The present study offered a 2-session telepsychiatry consultation clinic, consisting of a psychiatric evaluation session and a recommendation session, with patients located remotely in rural Georgia. Fifteen consultations with children aged 4 to 18 years (M = 9.73, SD = 3.39) with varying diagnoses were completed. Parental satisfaction with the telepsychiatry consultation model was high, overall mean of 4.58 (SD = 0.63) on a 5-point scale (n = 11). Establishing a child telepsychiatry consultation practice is feasible in rural areas. This report describes the benefits and challenges of our telepsychiatry consultation clinic with rural pediatric patients.