When the Georgia House of Representatives recognized Mar. 5, 2014 as Georgia Rural Health Day, it was the latest of a growing stream of acknowledgements that rural populations face unique healthcare challenges due to critical shortages of care resources. Those challenges are increasingly being met with telemedicine initiatives.

109 out of 159 out of Georgia's counties are considered rural. Their combined populations of more than 2 million face what Georgia HR 1245 described as "a continuing decline in the availability and quality of healthcare providers, specialists, nurses and professional services," with growing uninsured and elderly populations whose healthcare needs "far exceed immediately available care resources." This situation is common among states with significant rural populations.

Health initiatives to address these disadvantages increasingly rely on advances in telemedicine to eliminate geographic divisions between rural and urban care provision. Today's telemedicine solutions enable effective in-patient care in which local nursing staff provides hands-on attention while remote physicians deliver clinical decision-making, interacting with nurse and patient via two-way audio-video. Patients get the expert care they need, when they need it, without having to travel. Hospitals gain access to physician resources that they cannot effectively recruit or fund full-time.

"Eagle Telemedicine contributes to improved rural population health outcomes in Georgia and across the country by connecting rural hospitals with hospitalist, neurology and psychiatry services," said Rich Sanders, vice president telemedicine services at Eagle Hospital Physicians. "These services enhance rural hospitals' ability to deliver effective care to their communities, reduce strains on local resources and gain access to subspecialty support that is otherwise unavailable to them."