Piggott Health System’s growth strategy fueled by telemedicine is profiled in the Arkansas Business Journal. Since 2019, Piggott Health System, a 25-bed hospital in Piggott, Arkansas, has methodically added multiple telemedicine service lines with Access TeleCare to bolster its capacity to reduce outbound transfers of patients to other hospitals and serve as a highly reliable source of specialty care for its community. In July, it launched a fourth telemedicine service line.
Today, it provides its community with local, expert access to inpatient pulmonology, cardiology, and infectious disease care and outpatient neurology care through its partnership with Access TeleCare.
“The services help the hospital survive at a time when some hospitals – especially small, rural ones – are struggling,” James Magee, executive director of Piggott Health System, told the newspaper. Half of the country’s rural hospitals operate at a loss, with nearly 20 percent of facilities facing the possibility of shutting down completely, according to a recent report from the Chartis Center for Rural Health.
Piggott Health System has more than 100 initial consultations a month with Access TeleCare specialists. This increased capacity and timely access to specialty care experts enabled the hospital to significantly reduce its outbound patient transfers and increase its emergency room visits to more than 7,000 last year – doubling the 3,500 visits reported by the hospital just a few years prior.
The system’s newest telemedicine service line, outpatient neurology, also was featured in local television news coverage.
Learn more about Access TeleCare’s partnership with Piggott Health System here and contact us to see how Access TeleCare’s telemedicine programs change what is possible for rural hospitals and communities.
