13 Proven Telehealth Solutions Improving Access to Hospital Care

This is the first article in a multi-part series spotlighting proven telehealth-enabled solutions that address the goals outlined in CMS's Rural Health Transformation Program. Each installment will focus on a different area of care — starting here with inpatient care — and demonstrate how telehealth is already improving access, outcomes, and sustainability in rural communities.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently launched the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) to help rural communities "build a stronger, more sustainable health system". The initiative encourages innovative care delivery models that reduce health disparities, improve quality and access, and address workforce challenges.

To meet these goals, rural hospitals and providers must implement proven solutions and services that restore and sustain care access across inpatient, emergency, primary, behavioral, and chronic care settings.

Among the most consistently effective solutions is telehealth — not as a future promise, but as a ready-to-deploy, ready-to-expand force already driving impact in rural areas nationwide.

Among the most consistently effective solutions is telehealth — not as a future promise, but as a current, ready-to-deploy force to impact in rural health systems nationwide.

Using Telehealth to Improve Rural Access to Hospital Care

One of the core objectives of the CMS Rural Health Transformation Program is to “improve access to hospitals” across rural America. But in many communities, the issue isn’t just geographic access — it’s functional access. Rural hospitals may still be standing, but too often they lack the workforce or specialty resources to provide comprehensive inpatient, acute, and post-acute care.

Patients are frequently transferred out for services that could be delivered locally with the right support — resulting in treatment delays, fragmented care, and reduced viability of the local, rural hospital. When hospitals can no longer admit, treat, or safely discharge patients, the rural health system becomes unsustainable.

Telehealth offers a proven path forward. By extending clinical capacity virtually, rural hospitals can keep more patients close to home, cut down on unnecessary transfers, and bring back services that otherwise would disappear — all without needing a full onsite team.

Beyond emergency care — which will be addressed in the next article — the core of hospital access lies in the ability to admit, treat, and safely transition patients across settings. Telehealth-enabled solutions make it possible to cover that full continuum across the three key phases of hospital care:

• Inpatient Care – Giving rural hospitals access to hospitalists, specialists, and nursing support for their patients.

• Acute Care – Managing complex or high-acuity cases by tapping into TeleICU, virtual critical care, and specialty consults.

• Post-Acute Care – Supporting recovery and strengthening recovery through virtual follow-up visits, remote monitoring, and smoother transitions back to home or into other care settings.

These solutions are not theoretical — they’re already working in rural communities today. For hospitals participating in the Rural Health Transformation Program, they represent ready-to-deploy, ready-to-scale strategies to meet CMS’s mandate to improve access to hospital-based care.

5 Proven Telehealth Solutions for Inpatient Care

For patients admitted to a rural hospital, timely access to hospitalists, specialists, or even adequate nursing coverage is often unavailable. These gaps leave local teams overextended, patients at risk, and hospitals dependent on costly transfers that undermine both care continuity and financial viability. Telehealth can fill those gaps, extending the reach of physicians and nurses while giving rural patients access to the same standard of inpatient care found in larger hospitals.

Here are three proven solutions that can immediately improve quality of care, increase staff satisfaction, and reduce transfers, resulting in a better financial picture.

1. TeleHospitalist Services

Enable 24/7 physician coverage for admissions, daily rounding, and overnight care in rural hospitals. 

Why it matters: Keeps patients local, reduces unnecessary transfers, and helps hospitals sustain inpatient services without requiring a full onsite staff.

2. Virtual Nursing

Provides remote support for admissions, discharges, patient education, and continuous monitoring. 

Why it matters: Alleviates staffing shortages, increases nurse-to-patient ratios, and improves patient satisfaction while reducing burnout among bedside nurses.

3. TeleSpecialty Consults

Delivers access to high-demand specialties such as cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, and wound care.

Why it matters: Shortens time to diagnosis and treatment, reduces costly transfers, and ensures rural patients receive comprehensive care close to home.

4. Virtual Sitter

Uses remote monitoring staff to observe patients at risk for falls, wandering, or self-harm.

Why it matters: Improves patient safety and reduces adverse events without tying up scarce bedside staff, helping rural hospitals stretch limited resources further.

5. Hospital at Home

A hybrid solution that bridges the transition from inpatient care to post-actue care. Delivers hospital-level services in the patient’s home, supported by remote monitoring, daily virtual rounds, and in-person nursing visits as needed.

Why it matters: Expands hospital capacity without expanding physical beds, reduces costs, and allows rural patients to receive high-acuity care locally — while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes.

5 Proven Telehealth Solutions for Acute Care

When rural hospitals face critically ill or high-acuity patients, the challenge is even more acute (sorry for the pun): most smaller rural hospitals lack access to intensivists, rapid neurology consults, or emergency backup. Without these supports, patients are often transferred — sometimes hours away — for conditions that could be managed locally with the right expertise. 

Telehealth provides that expertise in real time, helping rural hospitals stabilize, treat, and retain patients safely. Yes, local staff must be upskilled — but this also has the potential to attract qualified and ambitious staff.

Here is another set of five well-established and proven telehealth solutions (e.g., 15 years ago I facilitated the launch of TeleRespiratoryCriticalCare between the Mayo Clinic and a regional Critical Access Hospital).

6. TeleICU / Virtual Critical Care

Provides 24/7 remote intensivist monitoring, real-time consults, and decision support for critically ill patients.

Why it matters: Helps rural hospitals manage higher-acuity patients safely, reducing mortality, avoiding transfers, and keeping local ICUs viable.

7. TeleCardiology (Acute Cardiac Care)

Remote cardiologists support diagnosis and treatment of acute cardiac events (e.g., STEMI, arrhythmias).

Why it matters: Rural hospitals often lack cardiology coverage, leading to unnecessary transfers. Virtual consults allow patients to be stabilized and even treated locally when appropriate.

8. TelePulmonology / Respiratory Critical Care

Remote pulmonologists help manage acute respiratory failure, COPD exacerbations, and ventilator management.

Why it matters: Post-COVID, many rural hospitals are struggling with high respiratory case loads. Virtual support reduces morbidity and helps local teams manage advanced cases safely.

9. TeleNeurology (Non-Stroke Acute Cases)

Covers seizure management, acute encephalopathy, head trauma, and other neurological emergencies beyond stroke.

Why it matters: Neurologists are scarce in rural areas. TeleNeurology provides timely consults that can prevent unnecessary transfers and improve outcomes.

10. TeleBehavioral Health Crisis Support (for Acute Inpatient Episodes)

Remote psychiatrists and behavioral health teams stabilize patients experiencing acute psychiatric episodes.

Why it matters: Behavioral health crises frequently present in rural hospitals. Virtual consults reduce ER boarding, improve patient safety, and support timely placement or discharge.

3 Proven Telehealth Solutions for Post-Acute Care

Hospital discharge is only the beginning of the recovery journey — but for rural patients, getting timely follow-up care is often out of reach. Long travel distances, limited specialists, and gaps in home health resources all increase the risk of readmission. Telehealth bridges those gaps by keeping patients connected to their care team, monitoring progress remotely, and intervening early when problems arise.

11. TeleWound Care & Surgical Follow-Up

Provides ongoing remote evaluation of wounds and post-op recovery.

Why it matters: Reduces readmissions, prevents complications, and spares patients from traveling long distances for follow-up appointments.

12. Remote Physiological Monitoring (RPM) for Readmission Prevention

Tracks vitals and symptoms for patients recovering from hospitalization or managing chronic conditions. Especially important for conditions with high 30-day readmission risk, including heart failure (CHF), acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), pneumonia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Why it matters: Provides early detection of deterioration; prevents costly, non-reimbursed readmissions; and supports better long-term outcomes.

13. Virtual Transitional Care

In collaboration with the patient’s primary care provider, it delivers structured telehealth check-ins after discharge in collaboration with the patient’s primary care provider, focusing on medication adherence, follow-up scheduling, and symptom review.

Why it matters: Strengthens collaboration between hospitals and community-based providers, smooths the transition home, closes care gaps, and builds patient trust in the local health system.

Strengthening RHTP Applications with Telehealth for Hospitals

For rural hospitals, sustaining access to inpatient, acute, and post-acute care is essential to both patient outcomes and community viability. The 13 proven telehealth-enabled solutions highlighted here give hospitals practical, scalable ways to extend scarce capacity, reduce transfers, and keep patients closer to home.

As states develop their Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) applications, hospital-focused telehealth strategies should be core elements of their proposals. 

In the next articles of this series, we will highlight additional telehealth solutions for emergency, primary, behavioral, and chronic care — together building a comprehensive framework that directly supports the RHTP mandate to improve rural health access and sustainability.

Do you want to discuss how to integrate these solutions into your state’s Rural Health Transformation Program application? Email, text, or call me!

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Christian Milaster and his team launch, expand, and grow Telehealth Programs for rural health centers, behavioral health agencies, health systems, schools, and libraries. Christian is the Founder and CEO of Ingenium Digital Health Advisors where his team and consortium of experts partner with healthcare leaders to enable the delivery of extraordinary care by accelerating the adoption of digital health innovation.

To explore how we can help your organization solve your challenges, contact Christian by phone or text at 657-464-3648, via email, or video chat.