Thanks to everyone who joined the conversation on rural telehealth – from users, to loved one of users, hospital board members and folks working in the industry!

Telehealth: The Pandemic Shift

During this pandemic, the ability for patients to access their healthcare services shifted significantly. The need to reduce contact and interactions between patients and providers was recognized and telehealth was one of the ways many organizations responded to those challenges. Telehealth has allowed both patients and providers to safely interact. Come to this session to discuss your own experience(s) and to learn more about how telehealth has been used in our region during this challenging time. We will also discuss why services to the home are only expected to grow and will require even more bandwidth to support their delivery to both urban and rural communities.

Mary DeVany is the Associate Director for the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (GPTRAC), within the Institute of Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota. She has been involved with telemedicine activities since 1993 when she served as the state-wide telemedicine activities coordinator for the State of South Dakota.  Since then, she has served as the Director of Telehealth at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, Director of Avera Telehealth and before that as the Telemedicine Coordinator for Sanford Health. “Every time I visit with someone just beginning to think about telehealth, I get excited and re-energized about the many possibilities and for what the future