SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - Nearly half of South Dakotans live in rural areas, but access to healthcare can be difficult depending on where you live. On Tuesday, leaders met at the Sanford Rural Health Summit to tackle those challenges head-on.
Governor Rhoden made an appearance and highlighted upcoming funding and initiatives designed to expand healthcare so residents can receive the care they need without leaving the community.
"We're leading the way with new initiatives like telemedicine in motion, which puts telehealth in the back of ambulances all across South Dakota," said Governor Rhoden. "Now the Trump administration is prioritizing rural healthcare with the Rural Health Transformation Program."
Several of the strategies center on telehealth systems that are designed to speed up care and deliver medical equipment to communities with limited local resources.
"There are companies like Cadence, which is a remote monitoring company that says, 'We're going to send a scale and a blood pressure cuff home to you,'" said Dr. Nworah Ayogo, who is a partner at Thrive Capital. "We're going to just monitor that automatically. So 24-7, we'll be keeping track of your vitals so that if your blood pressure is high, we're actually going to call in to you and make sure that we're caring for you. And that's something that works regardless of how many doctors or nurses or people you have in your individual 380. It's setting up those systems and technology such that you can actually achieve those outcomes at scale broadly."
Dr. David Newman, who is the Chief Medical Officer of Virtual Care at Sanford Health, also explained how they have expanded and improved upon their technologies to reach as many patients as possible.
"We know that how healthy you are isn't based on your genetic code, but based upon your zip code. So in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, you have to often drive several hundred miles to see a subspecialist. We find that is unacceptable. So we have been leveraging virtual care for a lot of our patients. Now we're live with over 75 specialties, and we've saved patients a lot of time and hassle in order to get high-quality, high-value care," Dr. Newman said.
From telehealth services to new technology, leaders said that collaboration and innovation are key when it comes to keeping care within reach for all of South Dakota.