Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health in Lebanon, N.H., will provide telemedicine services and geriatric emergency department training, education and other resources to four rural hospitals in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The health system is partnering with West Health, a nonprofit organization that works to lower healthcare costs for elderly patients, on the initiative. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will provide the telemedicine support via a two-phase hub-and-spoke approach and will focus on geriatric nursing, transitional care management and support of on-call geriatric specialists.
The first two hospitals to receive DHMC's telemedicine services are Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon and Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor, Vt. Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, N.H., and Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vt., will be brought on in phase two.
The initiative is part of a three-year research collaboration between Dartmouth-Hitchcock and West Health, which was formed in 2019.