Research Shows Telehealth is an Important Tool for Rural Hospitals in Treating COVID-19

Rural hospitals are more likely than urban facilities to have access to telehealth, a once-underused service that now is playing a key role in treating coronavirus patients, according to research by two health administration professors in Florida Atlantic University's College of Business.

Neeraj Puro, Ph.D., and Scott Feyereisen, Ph.D., say the research can help U.S. hospitals understand the extent to which they are prepared for another wave of the pandemic. The work has been published in The Journal of Rural Health, one of the leading peer-reviewed publications on rural health issues.

Telehealth connects patients with doctors by computer or telephone when in-person appointments are not possible or safe from disease transmission.

"It's a relatively easy way to expand access," Feyereisen said. "More health care access is good. It's one of the goals of the system."

Having telehealth provides hospitals the ability to expand their service offerings in multiple ways, according to the report. For example, telehealth services have the potential to improve outcomes for high-risk obstetric patients in rural communities, while telehealth facilitated the use of anti-microbials in rural areas where infectious disease physicians were not available. Still, barriers such as insurance restrictions and technology limitations remain in place, preventing the widespread use of the service.

Puro and Feyereisen concluded that talking with doctors remotely is an important part of improving rural health care. The odds of hospitals to provide telehealth services vary, with Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas leading the way among the nine regions designated by the U.S. Census.

What's more, coastal states, including New York, Florida, California and Washington, generally lacked the capability to provide e-services in rural areas, with telehealth specifically in short supply. In addition, telehealth capabilities are more common in hospitals that belong to a system and benefit from the economies of scale.

"Not only are rural populations some of the most vulnerable to diseases such as COVID-19, they might be called upon to provide back-up service to overflowing urban hospitals in the event such systems are overwhelmed," the report stated. "Going forward, telehealth is likely to play a large role in diagnosing patients, particularly in coming months as long as social distancing is a preferred strategy for preventing the spread of COVID-19. This virus might also become seasonal, and until a vaccine is introduced, telehealth will likely be increasingly integral to diagnosis and treatment."

The research also found that telehealth capabilities are predictably available in larger hospitals as well as teaching hospitals, and the professors say policymakers would be wise to provide support to smaller facilities.

The study of 3,268 hospitals is based on 2017 data from the American Hospital Association survey, Area Health Resource Files and Medicare cost reports.

Puro NA, Feyereisen S.
Telehealth availability in US hospitals in the face of the COVID‐19 pandemic.
The Journal of Rural Health, 2020. doi: 10.1111/jrh.12482

Most Popular Now

Giving Doctors an AI-Powered Head Start …

Detection of melanoma and a range of other skin diseases will be faster and more accurate with a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that analyses multiple imaging types simultaneously...

Philips Foundation 2024 Annual Report: E…

Marking its tenth anniversary, Philips Foundation released its 2024 Annual Report, highlighting a year in which the Philips Foundation helped provide access to quality healthcare for 46.5 million people around...

Scientists Argue for More FDA Oversight …

An agile, transparent, and ethics-driven oversight system is needed for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to balance innovation with patient safety when it comes to artificial intelligence-driven medical...

AI Agents for Oncology

Clinical decision-making in oncology is challenging and requires the analysis of various data types - from medical imaging and genetic information to patient records and treatment guidelines. To effectively support...

Start-ups in the Spotlight at MEDICA 202…

17 - 20 November 2025, Düsseldorf, Germany. MEDICA, the leading international trade fair and platform for healthcare innovations, will once again confirm its position as the world's number one hotspot for...

AI Medical Receptionist Modernizing Doct…

A virtual medical receptionist named "Cassie," developed through research at Texas A&M University, is transforming the way patients interact with health care providers. Cassie is a digital-human assistant created by Humanate...

Using Data and AI to Create Better Healt…

Academic medical centers could transform patient care by adopting principles from learning health systems principles, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. In...

AI Tool Set to Transform Characterisatio…

A multinational team of researchers, co-led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has developed and tested a new AI tool to better characterise the diversity of individual cells within...

AI Detects Hidden Heart Disease Using Ex…

Mass General Brigham researchers have developed a new AI tool in collaboration with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to probe through previously collected CT scans and identify...

Highland Marketing Announced as Official…

Highland Marketing has been named, for the second year running, the official communications partner for HETT Show 2025, the UK's leading digital health conference and exhibition. Taking place 7-8 October...

Human-AI Collectives Make the Most Accur…

Diagnostic errors are among the most serious problems in everyday medical practice. AI systems - especially large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4, Gemini, or Claude 3 - offer new ways...

MHP-Net: A Revolutionary AI Model for Ac…

Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Accurate segmentation of liver tumors is a crucial step for the management of the...