Rural Hospitals Partner With Access Physicians to Ensure Local Critical Care Capacity for COVID-19 Patients

April 21, 2020 (Dallas, TX) – Access Physicians and seven rural hospitals in Texas today launched a pulmonary and critical care specialty collaborative to ensure local residents requiring an ICU-level of care because of COVID-19 can receive that care at their community hospital. Through the collaborative, rural hospitals will be able to care for the most severely ill COVID-19 patients in their local communities and not have to transfer them to urban facilities.

The seven participating hospitals are:

·        Coryell Health, Gatesville

·        Cuero Regional Hospital, Cuero

·        Dimmit Regional Hospital, Carrizo Springs

·        Frio Regional Hospital, Pearsall

·        Goodall-Witcher Healthcare, Clifton

·        Hamilton Healthcare System, Hamilton

·        Starr County Memorial Hospital, Rio Grande City

“Access Physicians has a tradition of working with forward-thinking hospitals to bring high acuity specialty and subspecialty care to their patients through telemedicine,” said Chris Gallagher, MD, CEO, Access Physicians. “Today that tradition continues with this new rural hospital collaborative to leverage our clinical excellence for rural Texas residents in seven different communities.”

Board-certified pulmonary and critical care specialists from Access Physicians will be available 24/7 for the participating hospitals should they have patients with COVID-19 requiring an ICU level of care, such as the need for mechanical ventilation. Access Physicians has worked with the clinical and operational teams at each hospital to ensure on-site resources are available and capable of supporting such a high level of care.

“Knowing that COVID-19 patients can present to any healthcare facility, our partner rural hospitals had the foresight to develop and implement a solution so that access to care for their communities isn’t compromised,” said Gallagher. “These rural hospitals are to be commended for their vision and collaboration.”

Access Physicians is a well-established, physician-led telemedicine pioneer providing on-demand consultation services to over 190 hospitals. To date, the company has provided care to more than 1.6 million high acuity patients with complex conditions and needs, such as respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation, septic shock, vasopressors, advanced heart failure, and cardiogenic shock.

With nearly a decade of experience, the company’s core service lines include infectious disease, pulmonary and critical care, cardiology and cardiac arrest management (“Code Blue”), neurology, and maternal fetal medicine.