Improving Rural Populations’ Access to Care: On Any Connection and Any Device

An estimated 1 in 5 Americans live and work in rural areas across the nation.  Approximately 60% of the nation’s counties are rural.  In relations to healthcare, the rural population has critical gaps.  There are 2,157 Health Professional Shortage Areas in rural areas compared to 910 in urban areas.  Almost a third of America’s hospitals are Critical Access Hospitals.

According to the Rural Health Information Hub, 19.5% of rural adults describe their health status as fair/poor vs. 15.6% of their urban counterparts.  Rural residents have more frequent occurrences of diabetes and coronary heart disease than non-rural areas.  Given their remote location, rural populations may experience difficulties in securing reliable transportation and traveling considerable distances in order to reach a provider or a hospital.

Due to these challenges, rural communities can benefit from widespread deployment and usage of virtual care.  Traditional healthcare settings (such as hospitals and medical offices) are insufficient to meet the increasing needs to provide rural residents with access to care that is convenient and timely.  Healthcare organizations can embrace virtual care and use technology- based virtual visits to augment and accelerate their current methods of delivering follow-up care to rural populations.

While the broadband infrastructure continues to be built throughout the U.S., healthcare organizations can help rural populations leverage virtual care across mobile connections using Synzi’s virtual care platform.  Designed to run on commodity devices and connections, our platform enables providers to deliver high quality virtual care within the context of existing devices and infrastructure.  Virtual visits allow healthcare providers to follow-up with rural patients and bring care conveniently to a patient’s home, without requiring a patient (or the provider) to travel long distances for the follow-up appointments.   Given the shortages of various types of health professionals in rural communities, our intelligent call routing can quickly align rural patients’ requests for follow-up care with an organization’s available care providers. Providers can provide remote care to the comfort and convenience of the patient’s home, extending the reach of care beyond the traditional four walls of a hospital or medical office.

In order to provide all populations better access to care, healthcare organizations should not be stymied by the limitations of today’s broadband situation.  Using Synzi’s platform, mobile connectivity can be levearged during timely, quality virtual visits.  Providing care via a cellular or limited broadband connection can be critical for rural patients who may experience geographic isolation when trying to obtain immediate care.   It is expected that continued investments in broadband infrastructure and adoption will eventually extend virtual care to at-home patients, such as those in rural communities.

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