At Morgantown-based West Virginia University Medicine, a physician in Morgantown could move from seeing a patient in their exam room to another in Summersville, then another in Princeton — all without leaving their chair.
That kind of reach was unimaginable a decade ago, when physicians crisscrossed the state to see patients who had few other options. Now, WVU Medicine has stitched together a network of telemedicine hubs across West Virginia, allowing patients in all 55 counties to connect with specialists hundreds of miles away while still being supported by nurses and advanced practice providers close to home.
“We’ve saved parents weeks of time off work and hours of driving just by bringing those visits closer,” Shannon McAllister, the health system’s assistant vice president of population health and telemedicine, told Becker’s. “It really does reduce barriers to care.”
The hubs are only one strand in a broader web of virtual care programs WVU Medicine has been building, from centralized sepsis monitoring that has lowered mortality rates to virtual nursing that helps bedside staff manage heavy workloads. Together, the initiatives are changing how care is delivered in one of the nation’s most rural states.
At the core of the effort, Ms. McAllister said, is the philosophy that technology should not be a “cool add-on” but a way to make care more accessible and meaningful.
“All of our decisions really do lead back to our mission of improving the health of West Virginians,” she said. That means ensuring that “a patient in Boone County has no more barriers than a patient who lives next door to the medical center in Morgantown.”
The effects are tangible. Pediatric patients who once traveled five hours round trip for multiple specialist visits can now be seen in a single day at a local hub. Primary care providers use e-consults with specialists to cut down on unnecessary referrals, saving families money and time.
Inside emergency departments, WVU’s centralized sepsis team monitors electronic health records for early warning signs, filtering out false alarms and flagging only the most urgent cases. “It reduces that white noise for physicians,” Ms. McAllister said, adding that the initiative has already led to declines in death rates at several hospitals.
The same logic drives the health system’s virtual nursing program. The model frees bedside nurses to focus on direct patient care while remote colleagues handle discharge instructions and patient education — tasks that can be rushed on busy floors.
“By taking it slow and really thinking through the tasks that these virtual nurses can do, and how they can help and collaborate and build that relationship with their units, we’ve really improved the whole rollout,” she said. “It’s very well accepted in the places that we have been able to implement virtual nursing programs.”
WVU Medicine is now preparing for what McAllister described as the next frontier: “smart room” technology. Cameras, sensors and software could enable a single room to host virtual consultations, monitor patients at risk of falling, track how often someone turns in bed, and even send staff distress alerts. The system is evaluating vendors with the goal of “future-proofing” its hospitals so new advances, including artificial intelligence, can be layered on without constant overhauls.
For a state known for its mountainous terrain and sparse population, the push is about leveling the playing field.
“When you pick up the phone and need help, we want to make sure that none of those barriers get in a patient’s way,” Ms. McAllister said.
The post How WVU Medicine is reshaping rural care appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.
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