As rural providers continue to face workforce shortages and access challenges, Sanford Health is doubling down on virtual care — not just as a service offering, but as an integrated model for training, retention and community health.
This month at the Reuters Digital Health conference in Nashville, Jeremy Cauwels, Sanford’s chief medical officer, explained what this looks like at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based system, which operates in several states across the Midwest.
Sanford physicians across 79 specialties have delivered virtual care this year — and these virtual visits are saving an average of 176 miles in car travel per patient, Cauwels said.
“That’s half a tank of gas for some vehicles, and half a day’s worth of work,” he pointed out.
Not only is virtual care more convenient for patients, but it can also help fill critical gaps in access, Cauwels added.
He noted that a decade ago in the rural areas surrounding Bemidji, Minnesota, there were five community hospitals that all had at least one primary care doctor who delivered babies. Now, that number is zero, he stated.
To address this problem, Sanford is using virtual tools, such as portable ultrasound and vitals kits, in emergency departments to assess and support pregnant women remotely.
“We’re able to virtually connect to not only Mom, but to those local emergency rooms, and make the decision from 100 miles away as to whether or not Mom needs to be shipped to Bemidji for the only obstetrics care in the region, or whether or not she can stay back home and recover,” Cauwels explained.
He also pointed out that alternating virtual and in-person visits helps maintain continuity of care and compliance with obstetric guidelines, resulting in better maternal and fetal health outcomes. Overall, he believes that more frequent communication through virtual means helps prevent avoidable ER visits by catching issues early.
Tools that improve patient follow-up and monitoring also ease physicians’ emotional burden, which leads to better job satisfaction and retention, Cauwels said.
He noted that Sanford is wholly committed to expanding virtual care’s reach and impact — so much so that the health system built a physical hub that supports virtual care training and provides a technology infrastructure.
“People would say, ‘You don’t need a building to do that.’ We need a building because we need to be able to teach it. And we need to be able to house some of our hardware and software, but mostly, as we’re growing more residents, more fellows, more medical students, we need a place where they can sit down and actually have the conversations they need to have, and then maybe walk around the wall and actually sit down and talk to the patient so they can understand how things really felt in that exchange,” Cauwels remarked.
This virtual care center gives clinicians a place to learn, reflect and engage in patient care using technology, he said.
By investing in both people and technology, Sanford is seeking to create a more sustainable future for providers and a more accessible system for patients.
Photo: tonefotografia, Getty Images
