Telehealth Network Grant Program: Healthy Granite County Network, Intermountain Healthcare
The Georgia Health Policy Center recently spoke to Kayla Sanders, the network director for the Healthy Granite County Network, about the impact of a new telemental health network on access to care in rural Montana.
To date, what has been the biggest accomplishment of your telehealth program?
Intermountain Healthcare and the Health Resources and Services Administration have been very flexible with us in this project. We have been able to implement not only the telecrisis line in our local Critical Access Hospital’s emergency room to help those in their greatest moments of need, but we also have been able to implement outpatient care via community health workers and a local psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. The community has been able to receive this much needed mental health resource and care coordination that did not exist prior to this grant project, which ultimately will hopefully decrease the frequency and the intensity of need going forward.
What is a tip you would share with an organization launching a similar telehealth program?
I would definitely say be flexible and whenever possible try to think outside the box, especially in a pinch. One of our biggest challenges when we started the project was the difference in licensing between Montana, where we are locally, and Utah, where Intermountain Healthcare is based. This caused some delays in implementing the telecrisis services at the rural sites. So, rather than sit and wait, we got creative and spent that time building the outpatient services. We used our local network and some of our partners helped create those additional connections in our surrounding communities. We requested some readjustments to the budget, and as I said, flexibility was key and we were able to come up with services that filled the gaps in our communities while we were waiting for the telecrisis licenses to come through.
How does participation in the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth’s Telehealth Network Grant Program impact your broader health improvement efforts?
It is all really working hand in hand and we have brought a lot to the community in a very short amount of time. We began serving all three of our little local schools when the company that was covering their mental health needs pulled out. Luckily, we recruited an amazing community health worker, who is actually working on her licensure as a clinical social worker here in Montana and is focused on children. We have been able to fill this need, and she is very busy. She is actually sitting in space in the schools. So, there is even less disruption to the kids’ days. They can just go straight to her office and get the services they need directly with their parents’ involvement.
Our sheriff’s department is able to call on our psychiatric nurse practitioner for acute needs and medication management. She is located in our courthouse building, so she can walk right over to the jail. This has been pretty handy for people. We find that it also helps reduce stigma for receiving services, as you never know why somebody is at the courthouse.
What will your organization be doing more of or differently to emerge stronger from the pandemic?
I think we learned during the pandemic that human connections are important. Even if those have to happen over the computer or phone, a connection is still a connection. Especially in my rural community before COVID, that may not have been the thought process for people. But, having the ability through these community health workers to help people connect for their first telehealth appointment is very valuable. None of us can live and thrive in our own little bubbles. This project has helped us to create that connection for people here in rural Montana. And whether that be in our office or over telehealth or even better, a blend of the two, we are working to sustain those efforts so that people do not have to go back to feeling like they cannot connect or they are just on their own out there.