Telehealth enables health center to tackle rural and COVID-19 challenges

At Jordan Valley Community Health Center, a $740,000 award from the FCC meant it was able to deploy clinic-based telemedicine kiosks and home-based virtual care units, all while a NextGen EHR integration is in process.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jordan Valley Community Health Center in Springfield, Missouri, was facing the problem of providing quality patient care in a safe environment while most of its patient base was staying home.

THE PROBLEM

The provider organization believed telehealth was the future, but had only been using the technology in small niches, such as school-based care. When COVID-19 hit, the organization was required to use telehealth in a much broader sense.

“We expanded our solutions to include TytoCare, Zoom video conferencing and OTTO, which is a NextGen product,” said Dr. Matthew Stinson, vice president of medical and behavioral health services at Jordan Valley Community Health Center. “In the early phases of the pandemic, we also used telephone visits for behavioral health visits, medication refills, chronic disease management like diabetes symptom management, etc.”

While these platforms worked relatively well, he added, the scope of clinical diagnoses that can be made in video or audio consults is limited.

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