Covid-19 Telehealth using Zoom Video Conferencing

The Macronet and DGI Teams have been helping organizations re-design their communications strategy for many years. Recently we enabled North Country Health based in Whitefield, NH to implement telemedicine to help their patients and healthcare staff in the fight against COVID-19.  North Country Healthcare (NCH) is the parent organization of three Critical Access Hospitals and one home health and hospice agency https://northcountryhealth.org/.

Consistent with its Mission of providing consistent, accessible, and high-quality healthcare to the communities it serves, NCH has swiftly implemented significant Zoom capability at a pace previously unseen in Northern New Hampshire.   Tele-Medicine and Virtual Care were recently deployed to 90% of all clinical staff across all specialties (primary care, behavioral health, ED, Hospitalist, etc..) in just five days. Meeting the needs of a clinical population with chronic and acute conditions across a challenging rural geography was no easy task with such a short window to deliver. The assistance of the Macronet and DGI team along with the simplicity and scalability of Zoom permitted NCH to meet this need.

Our joint teams designed a mobile video conferencing solution enabling telemedicine from NCH-member facilities to connect their home health, hospice, and senior care living partners to the medical staff in the critical access hospitals. The purpose of the telemedicine cart and other mobile solutions is to enable the medical staff and patients to consult and review via video instead of in-person, preventing any infections from close proximity. The mobile solutions include self-powered carts that have 12-hour functionality before requiring outside power. Additional mobile tablet solutions have also been implemented.

This solution has changed the face of medicine and patient care in rural New Hampshire. If telemedicine can be deployed north of Mount Washington, it can be deployed anywhere.

by Brendan Sheehan, Co-Founder