The new Sanford Virtual Care Center (VCC) will serve as a flagship command center to support virtual health care in rural communities.
Created from a $350 million gift from Denny Sanford aimed at supporting rural health initiatives, it is now home to Sanford Health teams that will focus on developing new health care strategies.
Located by the Sanford Sports Complex, the 60,000-square-foot facility will support virtual care initiatives with three core pillars: education, innovation and clinical care.
- The Education Institute is a learning environment within the Virtual Care Center for caregivers to expand their knowledge in providing care virtually and developing new skills to ensure the highest quality care and patient experience. It will include simulation spaces where medical students, residents, clinicians and nurses can use augmented reality and virtual reality tools to train for the next generation of care delivery.
- The Innovation Center will be the first accelerator space in the nation that will specifically focus on AI tools and emerging technology designed to advance rural care delivery. Technology partners will collaborate with providers to co-develop new software, hardware and care delivery models in a virtual care environment. In addition, a patient and family experience room will allow patients to test new digital health tools and provide their feedback.
- In Clinical Service Delivery, both patients and caregivers will realize the flexibility and convenience of on-demand care, dramatically enhancing and expanding Sanford Health’s virtual options and transforming access to specialty care and specialists. This space will be home to My Sanford Nurse, direct-to-consumer acute care and virtual nursing. It will also include room for future expansion. Care options will be easily accessible to those previously limited by a wide range of barriers such as location, transportation or mobility, allowing caregivers to provide the best care in the best place for patients. In making care more accessible, providers remain closely connected to patients throughout their life journey, resulting in an improved experience.
“The Virtual Care Center is more than just a state-of-the-art building. It is a symbol of our commitment to reimagining care delivery,” said Dave Newman, M.D., chief medical officer of virtual care. “Virtual care is the single most important tool we have to address workforce shortages in rural areas. We are excited to train the next generation of clinicians in ‘webside manner’ and meet patients where they’re at by bringing care closer to them.”
The Virtual Care Center also offers a direct connection to Sanford Health’s satellite clinics, giving patients the option to get the care they need in person with more resources and expertise available virtually.
“We are embracing innovation and making a landmark investment in the future of rural health care,” said Susan Berry, vice president of operations for virtual care at Sanford Health. “We have vowed to fundamentally change the way that we deliver care.”
Tackling health care challenges
A looming supply-and-demand health issue awaits in rural areas, where aging physicians are retiring at the same time their baby-boomer patients are more in need of care. To that end, the Virtual Care Center will serve as a hub for future solutions.
“The VCC will house our teams that will define our strategy,” Berry said. “We work to collaborate on what the virtual care services are that we need to deliver to our patients.”
That effort will include monitoring capabilities for virtual care that will allow Sanford to move from a reactive model – as in waiting for something to go wrong and then trying to fix it – to a proactive model where, by identifying issues earlier, they get better results.
“The innovations team and the space that we have for the innovation center here really will be looking to work with our clinicians and employees as well as industry leaders,” Berry said. “They will be finding solutions to any barriers we may have in the delivery of virtual care as well as co-developing new solutions for the delivery of virtual care.”
A necessary next step
Why is Sanford Health committing to improving virtual care?
“Two-thirds of our patients that utilize virtual care in the last year live more than 30 miles from a major medical center,” Berry said. “This initiative allows us to continue to enhance and expand those virtual offerings to serve those communities.”
As an example, Berry cited emergency virtual services. The work at the Virtual Care Center will help Sanford Health continue to improve in the delivery of virtual emergency care to those dealing with traumas, strokes, burns and behavioral health issues.
“At the touch of a button, a provider in a rural setting has the ability to connect to an emergency trained nurse and a specialist to help with treatment for those patients with the goal of keeping those patients close to home,” Berry said. “It’s not uncommon for a patient living in a rural or farming community to travel three hours or more one way to see their provider. In some instances that may delay care, which can lead to more complex disease and poor health outcomes.”
Moving forward together
As the Virtual Care Center completed design and construction, Berry was heartened by the enthusiastic collaboration involved in a process that aims to help redefine what virtual care is and what it can be.
“The excitement is not just from the teams that will be located in the building. It also applies to people across the enterprise who really understand that in order to be that premier rural health system of the United States, we may have to do some things a little bit differently,” Berry said. “Our people are willing to do that to take care of our patients.”
That willingness will be a valuable and necessary attribute as Sanford Health moves forward in addressing longstanding challenges in rural health.
“The landscape is changing ever so rapidly and will continue to do so,” Berry said. “That’s one of the things about this building we really like – we intentionally made it very flexible so that we can evolve and grow with whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish in order to serve our patients in rural America better.”
Learn more
- Virtual care brings specialists to rural, underserved areas
- Sanford launches virtual behavioral health appointments
- Virtual care initiative featured at Reuters Digital Health
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Posted In Company News, Here for all. Here for good., News, Rural Health, Virtual Care
