Nick Fosness, CEO of Marshall County Healthcare Center Avera, recently participated as a panelist at the national Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Conference, held in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference, themed “Patients Over Paperwork”, had nearly 2,500 thought leaders in attendance and featured an array of presenters from across the country on topics included population health improvement, person and family engagement, behavioral health prevention and treatment, addressing the opioid epidemic, chronic disease management and many more.
Fosness shared a presentation on how their organization located in Britton, SD, utilizes extensive telehealth services to provide safe, high quality care in a frontier community of 1,250 people. Marshall County serves more than 1,000 emergency room patients visits each year. The next closest hospital is 60 miles away. Telehealth is used for specialty consults, initiate diagnostic testing, additional nursing support and eliminate unnecessary transfers.
