HEALTH CARE Expanding ways to ‘be there’ for wellness care and beyond! BY ANN HARRISON
PHOTOS COURTESY ST. LUKE'S WOOD RIVER MEDICAL CENTER
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et’s face it, we will always be needed by others. Our friends, our family, our clients, our community… you name it, people need other people. But, the most important person who needs you, is you. Staying on top of your own wellness is the best thing you can do in your quest to ‘be there’ for others. The good news is that St. Luke’s Wood River, or just St. Luke’s, as the locals like to call it, has been expanding care to ‘be there’ for our community in more ways than ever. St. Luke’s has long been providing worldclass health care to our active community and they just keep giving us more. And, just when you thought you were getting sick of our new virtual world, you’ll likely feel the opposite when it comes to expanded choices in care. Last year St. Luke’s developed and incorporated many new best practices that will continue to evolve to keep our local health care providers and patients safe, such as universal masking, and e-check-in for appointments. St. Luke’s Health System was also able to accelerate the rollout of virtual visits, via telehealth, for many service lines in order to provide care outside of the walls of the hospital and clinic setting. Virtual care is integrated into St. Luke’s in many ways, with a variety of service lines, including wellness checks and behavioral health, and now, even emergency care.
“A virtual visit is a real-time, audio-visual interaction between patients/families and providers using telehealth technology. It occurs via myChart and can take place on a tablet or smartphone. Some e-visits can also occur over the telephone without video,” explained Dr. Frank Batcha, a physician with SLWR Family Medicine. At St. Luke’s, virtual care is an efficient and relatively easy way to deliver clinical care. Patients can contact their primary care provider or specialist to inquire about utilizing myChart and telehealth. Patients can also message their provider, request prescription refills, view test results, schedule appointments and e-check-in for an upcoming visit via myChart. In fact, over the past year, St. Luke’s has made increasing use of virtual services at varying levels and piloted expansion of some offerings. The pilot efforts have turned out to be so successful at improving patient outcomes, at lower costs, that St. Luke’s is permanently expanding the virtual services to all of its nine emergency departments. Now, virtual bedside consultations and extended support coordinated through St. Luke’s Virtual Care Center will be available in St. Luke’s emergency departments here in the Wood River Valley alongside more traditional emergency care. Now patients and doctors can utilize live, two-way cameras, remote patient monitoring equipment and electronic health
Any patient who walks in the doors of any St. Luke’s emergency department should know they are getting the same level of care, no matter if their location is in the city or in the mountains.
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DISCOVER HAILEY & THE WOOD RIVER VALLEY 2021
