Current Telepsychiatry Activity in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Norway

Telemedicine Today’s last full survey of telepsychiatry was in the summer of 1994 (Vol. 2, no. 2). At the time, we identified 9 programs in the U.S. that were actively seeing patients, as well as one in Canada and one in Norway. The five most active programs were Norfolk (NE) Regional Medical Center (about 420 consultations/yr); U. of SC (about 288/yr); E. Montana (about 116/yr); E. OREGON (about 48/yr); and U. of KS (40/yr). Total consultations in 1994 among the 9 U.S. programs: about 948. A lot has happened in the ensuing years. Last year’s Telemedicine Today survey of active telemedicine programs, done cooperatively with the Association of Telemedicine Service Providers, documented 25 programs in the U.S. doing 3,460 telemental health consultations in 1996 (Vol. 5, no. 4). Among the 19 programs in the U.S. we were able to interview for this current survey, we found that an aggregate total of about 720 consultations/month are being done – or about 8,640/year. This is nearly a 10-fold increase since 1994.

INTERVIEW WITH DR. PETER YELLOWLEES

This past summer, Dr. Peter Yellowlees, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the U. of Queensland and Director of the Queensland Telemedicine Network, visited us in Kansas City. We took the opportunity to interview him.