Alabama small rural hospital shows effective use of telemedicine.

At a rural ICU, Covid-19’s summer surge put telehealth to the test A tele-ICU program run by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's health system has helped bolster critical care at a rural hospital. Katie Palmer STAT

On the surface, there’s little about Whitfield Regional Hospital that would make it a safety net for Alabama’s sickest Covid-19 patients. It has a small ICU with eight beds, and no critical care doctors on staff. The rural hospital has spent decades focused on caring for the community surrounding Demopolis, population 7,000, in the heart of the state’s Black Belt.

But over the summer, Whitfield became an unlikely landing pad for critically ill Covid-19 patients from across the entire state — with the help of a team of telemedicine specialists calling in from more than 100 miles away. ...

For an eight-bed ICU to take on such an outsized role in Alabama’s critical care is a contortion borne of the pandemic, not a long-term solution. But the forced experiment suggests that post-pandemic, tele-critical care could be an essential element to help build back the health of both rural hospitals and the patients they serve.  ...