New option for assault exams
Pilot program offers upstate hospitals 24-hour access to state-certified forensic examiners
In rural communities nationwide, sexual assault victims seeking care and forensic examination from their local emergency department are often faced with two options — get it from someone untrained or get it elsewhere.
The result is that evidence is sometimes overlooked, mishandled or lost or the victim is deterred from seeking care or examination
altogether.
United Concierge Medicine in Troy is hoping to correct this at more than 40 hospitals around upstate New York with the launch of TELESAFE, a new telemedicine program that provides hospitals with around-the-clock access to state-certified sexual assault forensic examiners, known as SAFE providers.
Nathan Littauer Hospital, a 74-bed hospital in rural Fulton County, is the first to partner with the virtual care company on the pilot project and the first hospital in the state to make use of virtual forensic care for victims of
sexual assault.
“God forbid something ever happened to one of my family members,” said Tina Bagley, a registered nurse and nurse educator at Nathan Littauer. “But if something did, I’d want them to be able to get help at their local hospital. The fact that we will have this service for our community of women 24/7, 365 days a year warms my heart.”
Bagley has provided care to sexual assault victims since 1999 and helped launch a care program at Saratoga Hospital. Although she and other colleagues are certified SAFE providers, it’s impossible for them to provide around-the-clock coverage, she said.
Now, she said, when
another nurse is on shift and a victim comes in for a forensic exam, they can call United Concierge Medicine and contact one of their SAFE providers, who will walk the nurse through the exam and answer any questions. This would all be done with the patient’s consent, and enabled by a mobile colposcope device — or, as Bagley puts it, “an Android on a stick.”
“It’s a phone that’s been revved up,” she said. “I can magnify and take pictures with it. I can communicate with the TELESAFE nurse. I can document evidence with it and download it to the cloud.”
Like other telemedicine technologies, data collected on the device is encrypted and secure, she
added.
New York state requires every emergency department in the state to provide timely, compassionate and quality medical care to victims of sexual assault, but the level of that care varies based on resources, staffing and training.
Only five Capital Region hospitals are Safedesignated, meaning they can have a certified SAFE provider available within 60 minutes of a patient arriving at the hospital. They include Albany Memorial, Albany Medical Center, St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, Samaritan Hospital in Troy and Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson.
SAFE providers are trained to provide comprehensive medical care and to collect forensic evidence in a sensitive and respectful way that does not cause further trauma to the victim. They must also be able to provide expert testimony when needed if the patient chooses to report the crime to law enforcement.
“The data on this is really pretty sad,” said Keith Algozzine, CEO of United Concierge Medicine. “Those who work on the front lines have known for years and years and years that patients are just not getting the care or justice they deserve because when they show up, their hospital just doesn’t have the resources to handle it.”
Forty-five other hospitals around upstate New York are eligible to join the program. Eighteen are federally designated critical access hospitals, meaning they’re at least 35 miles away from another hospital.
Hospitals can choose to supplement existing SAFE programs, or UCM can assist them in building their own.
The program is being funded by a $300,000 grant from the state Department of Health and a
$2.85 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The grants were administered by the St. Peter’s Hospital Foundation.