BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) — A key report on Vermont’s ailing health care system recommends expanding telehealth services. But how can officials ensure rural Vermonters have equal access?
Telehealth is when patients use a device to connect to a care provider digitally. But what if you live in an area without access to the internet? Or you don’t have a telehealth-compliant device? Or you don’t know how to use it?
Roz King, the chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, has a solution.
“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care, easier, better, quicker, so we’re wondering if telehealth might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” King said.
A new $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships will fund research into setting up telehealth services in rural libraries. Josh Worman, a member of the Vermont Library Association and partner on the grant, sees the program’s potential.
“It’s a central hub in the community, it’s a trusted place,” he said “Places where people feel relaxed and safe, and they know that their needs can be taken care of by professionals and they can be helped. It just seemed like a natural fit.”
And a natural fit into the plan to reshape Vermont’s health care system. Act 167′s recommendations mention the word telehealth 40 times.
An increase in telehealth has the potential to decrease wait times at urgent care centers and emergency rooms and for specialty and primary care appointments. For people who live far from a hospital or don’t have transportation, it’s an easy way to access care from wherever you are.
“There can be these huge gaps for people to get to the treatment they need, but more often than not we’re usually all pretty close to a library,” King said.
Over the next year, the researchers will look into the project’s feasibility for privacy and contagion prevention and then pick at least two libraries to pilot the program. Your future doctor’s appointments may be just a walk down to the local library.