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@ShahidNShah
Why Rural Telehealth Alone can't fix Care Access Problems
Telehealth and other remote monitoring tools once promised to ease the nation's biggest rural health challenges and care access barriers.After all, a lot of what gets in the way of healthcare visits is geography. According to a study from Texas A&M Health, travel distances are becoming more pervasive, with more people from rural areas having to travel 30 minutes to get to a medical appointment than ever before. When the travel distance is too far, patients will often go without care.Telehealth and other connected health solutions promised to fix that problem by letting patients and providers meet virtually. There's no 30-minute drive when patients can log onto their appointments on their computers, tablets or smartphones.
Medigy Insights
When the pandemic struck, it spurred widespread telehealth adoption that has changed the practice of rural medicine even as COVID-19 became endemic, she explained during an interview.Even in light of wide telehealth adoption, people living in rural areas still face greater barriers to either in-person or virtual care than their urban counterparts. According to a 2023 assessment from the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. is home to the steepest geographic health disparities in the developed world, with the nation leading the world in care access disparities between rural and urban people.
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