Remote healthcare delivery in Alaska

This presentation will cover Southcentral Foundation's (SCF) methods for remotely delivering and supporting health care in rural Alaska. SCF is an Alaska Native customer-owned system responsible for providing healthcare to approximately 65 000 Alaska Native and American Indian people in southern Alaska, including 55 rural villages, many of which are in remote areas of the state and are only accessible by air. SCF's clinical teams in the urban setting work regularly with rural villages to deliver services including but not limited to primary care, dentistry, and optometry. Relationships are the foundational philosophy of SCF. Relationships are built and maintained with the rural villages at all levels including clinic workers and community leadership. These kinds of strong relationships allow providers to work together with the community to achieve wellness. Village clinics are staffed by physician's assistant/nurse practitioners and/or local village health aides. SCF providers use electronic communication, including state-of-the-art telemedicine technology, to consult on assessment and treatment of cases. In some cases, appropriate treatment requires SCF to bring patients (called 'customer-owners') to Anchorage, which is Alaska's largest city and where SCF is based. A robust system of training and support has been developed to sustain health care delivery to remote communities in Alaska.
Objectives:
Describe how the Southcentral Foundation Nuka System of Care delivers health care to remote communities across Alaska's 591 500 square miles.
Review how the core principles of community ownership and relationship based care of the Southcentral Foundation Nuka System of Care align and integrate in remote healthcare delivery.
Describe the training and support provided to support health care delivery to remote communities in Alaska.

This abstract was presented at the Innovative Solutions in Remote Healthcare - 'Rethinking Remote' conference, 23-24 May 2016, Inverness, Scotland.