Telehealth Brain Injury Training for Rural Behavioral Health Generalists: Supporting and Enhancing Rural Service Delivery Networks.

Rural psychologists are frontline primary behavioral health care providers for nearly 60 million Americans, but they face limited access to peer consultation and continuing education. This article describes a program that matched 70 rehabilitation inpatients who had new brain injury with rural clinicians from patients' home communities. Neuropsychologists provided one-on-one training for clinicians through telehealth video teleconferencing. Clinicians showed gains in brain injury knowledge, and clients rated trained providers higher than untrained providers. Families seeking brain injury services can connect with these trained rural providers through a Web site, which receives more than 800 hits per month. Telehealth offers potential for rural clinicians to receive support, reduce professional isolation, gain working knowledge of specialty conditions, and deliver high-quality services for their rural clients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)