As behavioral health emergency department visits continue to spike, providers across the U.S. are scrambling to find ways to offer this service to patients in a more cost-effective, timely manner to increase throughput while simultaneously lowering expenses. 

Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare launched a virtual hospital services program late February, comprised of 35 telehealth programs and more than 500 caregivers, to address rural Utah's care needs.

Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster, N.H., is joining forces with Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Center for Connected Care to add telemedicine services in neurology and psychiatry.

Sisseton, S.D.-based Coteau des Prairies Health Care System implemented a telehealth program to improve patient outcomes in its emergency department, according to a March 13 post on athenaInsight.

Lorie Harper, MD, an assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's division of maternal-fetal medicine, is leading a research effort to improve birth outcomes for rural women with opioid dependencies, the university announced March 14.

A team of researchers led by a committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics assessed pediatric telehealth programs across the U.S. in a recent study published in Pediatrics.

Around 79 percent of U.S. adults received healthcare virtually in 2017, according to Accenture's 2018 Consumer Survey on Digital Health.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson selected SnapMD's virtual care management software as its systemwide telehealth platform, the company confirmed March 14.

Shriners Hospitals for Children in Chicago and Cincinnati are joining forces with Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw, Mich., to offer pediatric telehealth services to patients in Michigan, according to a Midland Daily News report.

A pilot program focused on remote therapy and data exchange improved blood glucose control among children and teenagers with Type 1 diabetes, according to a study published in Pediatric Diabetes.