15 Feb Mercy ACO Clinical Services, Inc. Receives a $496,348 Grant from USDA DLT

Mercy ACO Clinical Services, Inc. was recently awarded a $496,348.65 grant from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) to bridge gaps in care coverage, comprehensive services, clinical knowledge, and physical distance to nine rural Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs).

Mercy Virtual will install the equipment necessary to hardwire 77 patient beds in the nine rural end-user Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), meeting patients where they are to get them the health care that they need via telemedicine. The ACO will allow for 24/7 connectivity and coordination with the VCC, a hub with 957 employees including specialists in multiple areas, data analytics to ensure the creation of a comprehensive and instantly accessible patient health history and profile, and 3 monitoring capabilities. Bringing two-way audio-video telecommunications functionality through cameras and audio components to patient rooms will provide a consistent level of care to any location, providing the processes and services necessary to end hospital bypass, stop the high cost of transfers, and help create a culture within communities that once again engenders the confidence that “we can take care of our own.”

Typically, residents in rural areas want to receive their health care close to their home. When residents are not assured their local health care system can manage their routine health needs, these individuals are likely to forgo care. Moreover, if an individual has a need which requires them to visit a specialist outside the community, the patient will likely decline the necessary care. Barriers that prevent those in rural areas from seeing a specialist include lack of reliable transportation, immobility, financial burdens, anxiety of traveling to larger cities, and delays in receiving appropriate care. As a result, these individuals may seek to treat their condition through a local primary care provider, when, in fact, a specialist is necessary. Preventable conditions that could be managed locally if specialty services were available will likely escalate to more complex situations that require a transfer to medical facilities outside of the patient’s community. In the event a hospital transfer is required, the family members may not have the ability to visit their loved ones. In rural communities, there are barriers that stand in the way of providers’ ability to deliver the appropriate care to the right patient at the appropriate time. Residents in rural areas earn lower incomes, are older, are more geographically isolated, and are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions than their urban counterparts. According to the CDC, rural Americans are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke than individuals living in urban communities.

Mercy Virtual’s Improved Access Project will bring creative and innovative technical and clinical resource strategies from Mercy’s Virtual Care Center (VCC) to bridge gaps in care coverage, comprehensive services, clinical knowledge, and physical distance at nine Critical Access Hospitals. The end-user sites are Mercy’s Critical Access Hospitals in nine communities in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. These communities represent some of the most rural and underserved areas within Mercy’s service region. These sites were selected using the USDA criteria for rurality, prioritizing communities with populations less than 5,000 residents. Additional selection criteria included economic, geographic, and health care needs of the individual communities and the existing relationships and readiness for virtual solutions of the local Mercy administration.