Telepsychiatry: challenges in rural aging.

A significant health care dilemma for older individuals living in rural areas is that at a time in life when there is, predictably, a greater need for medical services, the ability to access those limited services is markedly reduced. Telepsychiatry presents an innovative and cost-effective strategy for the provision of improved local access to quality mental health services for the underserved rural elderly. Telepsychiatry has demonstrated the potential to improve access to mental health services, provide those services in an affordable and cost-effective manner and deliver those services at a quality nearly equal to traditional face-to-face services. Advances in telepsychiatry technology allow a core group of skilled mental health providers in a central location to provide timely local access to quality services for the rural elderly over a broad geographic area.