Dartmouth-Hitchcock, West Health Launch Geriatric Telehealth Program

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health is launching a telehealth program to provide specialized telehealth services for elderly patients and training for care providers at four northern New England Hospitals.

Through a partnership with the non-profit organization West Health, the New Hampshire-based health system will launch a hub-and-spoke telemedicine platform to serve providers and patients at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, NH and Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor, VT. A second phase will connect the network to Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, NH and Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, VT.

The program, the latest step in a three-year partnership with West Health, will provide connected health services and geriatric emergency department (GED) training, education and other resources to the four hospitals, enabling them to earn national accreditation as level 2 GEDs from the American College of Emergency Physicians.

As part of the collaboration, Dartmouth-Hitchcock is expected to soon open the nation’s first level 1 rural GED; the other 12 level 1 GED hospitals are located in urban areas.

This new project aims to expand healthcare access to thousands of seniors and boost resources for providers in a very rural part of the country. The five-hospital Dartmouth-Hitchcock network alone serves more than 2 million people in New Hampshire and Vermont.

“We are in a unique situation at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, as the two states we serve have large populations of older adults,” Scott Rodi, MD, Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s chair of emergency medicine, said in a press release. “When we partnered with West Health to create our GED program, we knew that working with critical access hospitals in our region would be the key to delivering the best, most comprehensive care to this population.”

“Geriatric emergency departments promote best clinical practices for older adults, create a more positive and sensitive physical environment and help improve health outcomes, better coordinate care, and reduce costs,” added Shelley Lyford, West Health’s president and chief executive officer. “We are pleased to be working with Dartmouth-Hitchcock to extend its reach to rural hospitals and bring the power of geriatric emergency care and telehealth to more patients throughout the region."

In launching the program, officials cited US Census Bureau reports that more than 46 million seniors live in the US, with roughly 20 percent facing barriers to easy healthcare access. Those seniors also account for 20 percent of ER visits, and often have multiple chronic or complex health concerns that test the resources of smaller and rural providers.

“Our location in the Upper Valley positions us right between New Hampshire and Vermont, which have two of the most rapidly aging populations of all 50 states,” Michael Lynch, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Alice Peck Day, said in the press release. “The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the need for telemedicine services and quality critical access hospitals more than ever, especially for elderly people who may struggle to get to doctor’s appointments or to a hospital in an emergency.”