Sanford Health Gets Real on Virtual Care

The health system’s new Virtual Care Center aims to use the latest in digital and telehealth technology and programs to address key pain points in rural healthcare.

Sanford Health Care is giving its virtual care strategy a very real base of operations.

The South Dakota-based health system, the largest rural network in the country, recently opened the Sanford Virtual Care Center at its Sioux Falls campus. Executives say the 60,000-square-foot building, divided into an Education Institute, Innovation Center and Clinical Service Delivery labs, will be critical in developing, scaling and sustaining innovative technologies and programs addressing rural health needs.

“We have lots of problems with access, quality and sustainability, and we firmly believe that virtual care is the single most important tool we have to address these shortages in our rural footprint,” David Newman, MD, Sanford Health’s CMO of virtual care, said during a recent HealthLeaders podcast.

David Newman, MD, CMO of virtual care for Sanford Health Care. Photo courtesy Sanford Health Care.

The new center comes at a time when Newman and his colleagues across the country are facing acute workforce shortages. Roughly one-third of doctors will be retiring in the next 10 years, Newman says, and there will be 25% fewer rural docs by 2030. There aren’t enough new doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers coming into the pipeline, and many of those that are will be heading to urban and suburban areas, where the patient base is bigger and the pay is better.

Enter telehealth and digital health, and the idea that a patient can access any care needed at home or in a local doctor’s office or clinic, while a rural health system can reach out and either provide those services or act as the conduit between the patient and a specialist or a larger health system with those resources.

“With a click of a button on your phone, just like ordering a pizza or talking to your grandkids on FaceTime, you can see a behavioral health provider,” says Newman, noting that roughly one-quarter of all behavioral health services are now handled via virtual care.

The center serves three specific functions. The Education Institute allows Sanford Health to have a hand in training the provider of the future, offer guidance on virtual nursing, robotics, AR and VR technology, remote patient monitoring (RPM) and so-called webside manner. Through this, the health system is bringing its current workforce up to date on new strategies and creating an environment to attract new providers.

“A lot of the younger doctors coming out, a lot of the younger nurses, this is an expectation,” Newman says, “And we see it as a huge recruitment and retention tool to offer these things.”

“Some younger providers want fully virtual careers,” he adds. “They want to be able to work from home. There’s a work life balance that is a much bigger thing for younger providers than it has been for older providers, and we want to be able to offer them work life balance.”

The Innovation Center gives Sanford Health an area to work with small companies and start-ups, as well as providing workshops for their own doctors and nurses to test out new ideas.

 “One of the biggest problems in healthcare right now is operationalizing really great ideas,” Newman says.

The Clinical Service Delivery labs, meanwhile, gives Sanford Health an area to test out new programs that pull family and caregivers into care management, as well as testing out Hospital at Home and other home-based care concepts. One lab might be designed like an exam room in a doctor’s office, while another represents a skilled nursing facility room and a third looks like a patient’s bedroom or living room.

“A big part of healthcare is not just examining what it’s like through the provider lens, but also seeing what it’s like from the patient,” Newman says.” We want to know how that patient is receiving healthcare” in different environments.

“We honestly want to be very, very nimble,” he says. “We designed the center to be changed. The rooms can be flexed, [because] we really don’t know where digital healthcare is going to be going in the next 10 years, and we’re OK with that, that we hope it’s very, very different and we hope that we’re ready to be different.”