Essentia Health-Fosston Expands Specialty Care With Hybrid Telehealth

As rural health systems experience mounting challenges, Essentia Health-Fosston is embracing innovation to ensure patients can receive care from expert specialists close to home.

Teleconsult appointments are live video visits that occur in an exam room at the Essentia Health-Fosston Clinic. They are much like traditional appointments. A registered nurse rooms the patient, hears about their concerns and checks vital signs. A clinician then joins the conversation on secure video.

Essentia Health-Fosston has been expanding specialty services and the use of teleconsult visits since April. Due to patient demand, the volume of these visits is steadily increasing in Fosston. For patients, the benefits are clear: greater flexibility and faster access to specialty services like behavioral health, diabetes education, cardiology, oncology, infectious disease, podiatry, sleep medicine, nephrology, urology, orthopedics and more. Many of these services are new in Fosston and typically aren’t offered in rural communities because there isn’t a large enough patient population to sustain them.

Essentia’s hybrid model removes that barrier.

“We’re really excited about these additional local care offerings,” said Mike Curtis, administrator at Essentia Health-Fosston. “These appointments are very similar to regular appointments. The big difference now is that patients can easily connect with a specialist right at their local Essentia clinic.”

Meeting virtually is a supplement to in-person care; for example, surgery patients may do their pre- and post-op appointments through a teleconsult visit while the surgeon then comes to Fosston to perform the actual procedure. This model ensures enhanced access to specialty care right here in the community, greatly expanding the options for patients in and around Fosston.

Teleconsult visits also have allowed the Essentia Health-Fosston Clinic to extend the area’s only option for weekend walk-in care. Walk-in care at the Fosston clinic is available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.

Essentia’s willingness to embrace technology on behalf of patients in rural communities is critical. Nationally, more than half of rural physicians are age 50 or older, with a projected 23% decline in rural doctors by 2030 due to retirements, according to the National Rural Health Association.

“These workforce realities demand creative solutions,” Curtis said. “As more specialists concentrate in big cities, teleconsult visits are essential to preserving access for people in communities just like Fosston.

“The challenges facing healthcare demand that Essentia — like every other system — maximize its resources. The low volume of patients needing many of these specialty services locally might not justify a full-time practice here in Fosston, but we are committed to providing reliable local access whenever we can do so in a way that is safe and sustainable.”

By expanding specialty care, Essentia Health-Fosston is strengthening rural healthcare access, speeding diagnosis and treatment, and improving health outcomes. Being able to perform many of the consultation appointments virtually, while the actual care or service is delivered in Fosston, is a win for patients and providers.

“I love being able to connect with my patients before and after surgery while keeping them close to home,” said Dr. Prasad Sawardeker, an orthopedic surgeon at Essentia. “By combining virtual consultations with high-quality local care, we’re expanding access to specialty services without sacrificing the personal connection patients deserve. It’s been rewarding to see how positively patients have responded, and we’ll continue using their feedback to make the experience even better.”