SC Hospital Receives $500K+ Grant to Support Telehealth Expansion

In support of continued efforts to increase the implementation of telehealth services, the Duke Endowment has provided Conway Medical Center (CMC) with a large grant totaling $510,000 to help the hospital enhance virtual care offerings and increase telehealth operations.

CMC is a 210-bed nonprofit hospital with a multispecialty group of 45 physician offices that provides healthcare to residents of Horry County, South Carolina.

The Duke Endowment is a private foundation based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The organization works to build and maintain improved community healthcare.

Like other healthcare organizations, CMC has experienced a significant spike in demand for and use of telehealth services. CMC will use the grant to fund various efforts to expand telehealth services. These include creating a telehealth team with a nurse practitioner/telehealth coordinator and a patient navigator and launching a pilot project to study data on charity care patients.

For the pilot, the hospital plans to select 500 people, all of whom will come from a pool of charity care applicants. The hospital will aid patients in engaging with telehealth, including providing education on how to use telehealth and patient portal services, as well as offering primary and specialty care services via telehealth and follow-ups to assess patient outcomes.

CMC believes that expanding telehealth services can provide many benefits for the population it serves, including reducing travel time and lowering costs. The hospital also expects to benefit from the services by experiencing lower rates of missed appointments, readmissions, and wait times.

“People living in rural communities often have limited access to healthcare, travel long distances to receive care, and may even delay care until they have a health emergency,” said Bret Barr, CMC president and CEO, in a press release. “Rural areas are seeing higher infection and death rates related to COVID-19 due to several factors, including a much higher percentage of underlying conditions, difficulty accessing medical care, and lack of health insurance. Expanding our current telehealth program to extend services will decrease challenges and barriers to care for these vulnerable populations."

Funds dedicated to promoting telehealth use have become more commonplace.

In March, the state government of Wisconsin invested $5 million in the implementation and expansion of telehealth services. The state health department planned to use half of the funds to develop child psychiatry telehealth services and the other half to support efforts to create new neighborhood-based telehealth access points. 

In May, the Department of Health and Human Services provided Title X family planning clinics with a $16.3 million grant to enhance their virtual care offerings. Title X family planning clinics provide health services to millions of low-income and uninsured individuals.