(The Telepractices Clinical Service Delivery Web site was paid for through a grant with the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.)

Teletherapy Program

To promote this mission, ISMC offers to rural school districts an innovative and alternative approach for speech therapy through the Speech Teletherapy Program. Real-time, interactive teleconferencing is used to provide a full range of school speech therapy services.

The services provided by the ISMC speech teletherapy program to rural school districts includes, but is not limited to, interim or long-term speech therapy, speech and language evaluation of students, and cooperative speech therapy services between rural school districts. Students receive speech therapy in either group or individual sessions. Real-time interactive teleconferencing allows the speech-language pathologist to conference with teachers and parents, and to participate in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process. Although we draw from our past experience in providing speech teletherapy services, each school district's speech teletherapy program is designed to meet the districts' and students' unique needs.

To date the ISMC speech teletherapy program has successfully partnered with rural school districts throughout Oklahoma to provide speech teletherapy services. The feedback that we receive from rural school districts is that the speech teletherapy program is a financially competitive and successful alternative to other service delivery models that they previously have used. Special education directors and administrators express satisfaction with the consistency of our services and the enthusiasm that the students have for attending speech therapy via real-time interactive teleconferencing. Parents' and teachers' comments about the student's progress reflect our observations that speech teletherapy is a viable alternative to traditional speech therapy.