FRANKFORT, Ky. -- The Kentucky TeleHealth Network was one of eight invited guests to participate in a nine-month process to help the Joint Credentialing and Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations redefine medical staff standards pertaining to tele-health.

The new standards should significantly reduce the paperwork for tele-health credentialing, and help overcome a significant barrier to expanding tele-health.

The Kentucky TeleHealth Network (KTHN), with 66 network sites, brings specialty services to rural health-care facilities. These 66 sites include four training centers -- the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, the St. Claire Medical Center and the Trover Foundation.

Other network sites include various health-care entities such as hospitals, primary-care centers, comprehensive-care centers, local health departments and mental-health centers. Rural patients can access medical specialists without leaving their local community or seeing another practitioner beside their local physician -- which keeps health-care revenues in the local economy and supports economic development.

Of Kentucky's 120 counties, 105 are federally designated as medically underserved. The KTHN has become an important delivery vehicle for the Department for Public Health, which has been conducting training sessions for the Health Access Nurturing Development Services (HANDS), Epidemiology, Tuberculosis and AIDS/HIV programs.

In addition, the Department for Medicaid Services has also utilized the network to conduct HIPAA training. -- Donna Veno, Governor's Office for Technology