Rural Hospital Financial Health and Telehealth Support Models

Project Overview

Telehealth presents great potential for improving rural healthcare access and rural hospital financial viability. Members of the MUSC COE team conduct a variety of evaluations to help shed light on rural hospital financial health and its intersection with telehealth. Using multiple public hospital-level datasets, investigators evaluate various telehealth implementations on rural hospital financial performance. Previous work has focused on tele-emergency programs, tele-hospitalist programs, and the availability of telehealth services across hospitals. Building on MUSC’s 2019 partnership with a rural hospital at risk of closure, this year, the COE team is expanding research to assess the impact of telehealth services on a newly opened rural hospital that relies heavily on telehealth. The MUSC team will conduct new quantitative evaluations of key financial, operational, and quality performance indicators to explore the effectiveness and potential replicability of MUSC’s hub-and-spoke telehealth partnerships in rural settings. These assessments will inform future strategies for enhancing both healthcare delivery and hospital sustainability in underserved areas.