Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health opens telehealth urgent care service
Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health on Wednesday launched a virtual urgent-care service with telehealth company MDLive.
The 24/7 virtual urgent-care service will connect patients to clinicians at Dartmouth-Hitchcock through a phone call or video visit, in an effort to avoid having patients travel to an emergency department or physical urgent-care clinic for minor, non-emergency conditions like allergies, bug bites or the flu. Physicians from MDLive's medical group will provide back-up coverage.
Hospitals experienced a rapid rise in telehealth use in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many executives have spent recent months figuring out how to sustain that momentum and best integrate the practice into their services long-term. Dartmouth-Hitchcock used to average three telehealth visits per week, but in the early days of the pandemic telehealth visits shot up to 2,000 a day, health system CEO Dr. Joanne Conroy told Modern Healthcare in spring of last year.