For Healthcare Providers
As an AURORA spoke site, your team extends specialty dermatology to the rural or remote community you serve, backed by training, documentation tools, and dermatology hub support.
Why partner
AURORA is designed to extend dermatology expertise across Alaska by connecting specialty hubs with local clinics, community health sites, and rural care teams. For many patients, travel is difficult, delayed, or simply not realistic. The goal is to bring thoughtful specialty support closer to where patients already receive care, in their own communities, clinics, towns, and villages.
Patients can receive specialty-supported dermatology care through the local clinics and care teams they already know. AURORA is built to reduce distance barriers and bring specialty guidance closer to home.
Training in disease recognition, photo capture, documentation, and care workflows helps strengthen local clinic capacity and gives rural care teams more confidence in managing complex skin disease.
The dermatology hub supports each case with diagnosis, treatment planning, documentation support, and access coordination, while the local clinic remains central to the patient's ongoing care.
From larger regional clinics to small rural and village-based care settings, AURORA is designed to extend specialty reach across Alaska without separating patients from their local care teams.
The spoke model
You do not need to be a dermatologist, and you do not need to start with everything. AURORA meets your site where it is, provides the training and tools, and coordinates the specialty work behind every case. You commit a small, achievable amount; the hub carries the diagnosis, the plan, prior authorizations, and access coordination. Over time, your team grows from first awareness to full shared care.
Training and support
Spoke-Ready training prepares local teams to participate in the AURORA pathway through practical, site-based education. When appropriate, the AURORA team can travel to participating sites for live training, workflow preparation, and basic tools that help clinics recognize, document, image, and refer dermatology cases more consistently.
AURORA can provide live, in-person training at participating sites to introduce the pathway, answer workflow questions, and help local teams prepare for real-world use.
Training focuses on practical recognition of covered skin conditions, warning signs, referral readiness, and the difference between routine concerns and cases that need specialty input.
Local teams learn how to capture standardized photos, complete the minimum data set, and use condition-specific documentation templates that make each referral easier for the hub to review.
Participating sites receive basic tools, checklists, and templates to support image capture, documentation, referral preparation, follow-up planning, and communication with the dermatology hub.
Referral-ready documentation
You do not need to assemble a perfect workup. AURORA gives your team simple templates and photo guides that build a complete referral for you. Your part is a few quick things; the hub does the rest, including organizing the clinical detail it needs to return an accurate diagnosis and plan the first time.
What your site does
What AURORA handles for you
Our condition templates prompt for the right details automatically, so your team does not have to remember them. For example:
The template walks through skin coverage, problem areas like nails or scalp, any joint symptoms, and what has been tried. It includes a quick joint-symptom check the form guides you through.
The template captures itch, sleep, any history of skin infections, prior treatments, and notes for children, with simple prompts at each step.
The template guides you through where the lesions are, drainage or scarring, pain, and prior treatments, and helps estimate severity without specialist scoring.
What does payer-neutral access support mean? It means the hub team helps organize documentation, prior-treatment history, and insurance requirements without favoring any medication, manufacturer, or pharmacy.
Become a spoke
AURORA is recruiting founding spoke sites across Alaska, including tribal health organizations, community health centers, critical access hospitals, and rural primary care practices. See what it takes and start a conversation.
Referral pathway
The local team recognizes a suspected or undertreated skin condition.
The spoke completes the minimum data set and captures standardized photos.
A specialty-ready referral goes to a dermatology hub.
The hub evaluates the case and builds a diagnosis and a treatment and monitoring plan.
A clear summary and plan go back to the referring site, with access support.
The patient continues care locally, with the hub available for questions and ongoing case discussion.
Provider FAQ
Patients with a suspected or undertreated chronic skin disease, a condition that is not responding to current treatment, a worrying or changing lesion, or any skin problem where the local team would value specialty input on diagnosis, documentation, monitoring, or referral.
The local spoke team identifies and documents the case, captures standardized photos and the AURORA minimum data set, and connects to a dermatology hub. The hub returns a diagnosis, a treatment and monitoring plan, and access support, and the patient stays with the local team for follow-up.
The patient's local clinic. AURORA supports the local team with specialty input and a clear plan. It does not replace the clinicians who care for the patient day to day.
There is no cost to spoke sites to participate in AURORA. The program is designed to be supported through grants and sponsorship funding, so participating rural clinics and community care teams can access training, documentation support, and hub coordination without a site participation fee. Funding support does not influence clinical recommendations, referral decisions, or patient-level care.
Quality and outcomes reporting uses de-identified, aggregate information only, and patient identity is not part of it. See the data transparency note below for the kinds of fields involved.
Data transparency
AURORA measures access and quality, not prescribing. Reporting uses de-identified, aggregate information only. No education sponsor or commercial funder ever receives patient-level data.
Examples of the kinds of information used for quality reporting:
Clinical records and program reporting are kept strictly separate, and no personal health information moves through this website.