Since launching its virtual care center last year, St. Luke's Health System has only been operating at about 20 percent capacity, according to Boise, Idaho-based health system's Oct. 22 blog post.
"We've been really diligent in choosing the right next step versus just trying to do everything all at once," said Krista Stadler, senior director of telehealth for St. Luke's Health System. "This ensures our efforts are focused and what we produce is of high quality."
Since opening in August 2018, St. Luke's Virtual Care Center has helped 125 patients manage their chronic care conditions through remote patient monitoring via tablets and Bluetooth-enabled devices. Its telehealth intensive care unit saw a total of 6,084 patients and more than 32,000 patients were treated via virtual care services.
The health system is working on infrastructure initiatives to support virtual care systemwide, including wiring and equipping all emergency departments to support current and future virtual clinical services. With the enhancements, St. Luke's plans to expand its remote patient monitoring and ambulatory telehealth services. The health system also plans to launch new telehealth services for behavioral health within the next two years, according to the report.