2 Digital Health Tools Every Rural Clinician Should Try

By: Jan Perez | 1/31/19

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic disease affects 117 million Americans and is a primary reason behind skyrocketing health care spending. ¹ But patient outcomes are not improving; in fact, for patients with chronic disease, outcomes are typically the poorest as they are challenged to self-manage their conditions on a daily basis.

Access to support for social determinants of health in addition to medical needs can lead to better outcomes for patients. Digital health coaching and e-consultations are two unique solutions that can help achieve these goals.

Providing communication, reminders, education, and personal interaction, digital health coaching can help patients bridge the gap between clinical visits. Pack Health reports that its digital health coaching has increased medication adherence by 18 percent on average, and participants have reported a 50 percent reduction in flares for individuals with rheumatoid arthritis.²

E-consultations can be equally effective in allowing primary care providers timely access to specialty care. With an average cardiology wait time across 15 major metro areas of 21.1 days, e-consultations can be a useful tool for diagnosis and treatment recommendations, with the potential to replace more than 73 percent of routine specialty referrals.³

Both digital health coaching and e-consultations are available for free as part of CME Outfitters’ CE activities on rheumatoid arthritis and non-valvular atrial fibrillation. We have partnered with AristaMD to offer free e-consults, and we have partnered with Pack Health to offer three-month digital health coaching programs to patients with rheumatoid arthritis or atrial fibrillation.

We encourage rural health clinicians to use these digital health tools to improve patient outcomes by providing timely, patient-centered care.

Learn more about digital health coaching and e-consults in these short videos.


NRHA commissioned the above piece from CME Outfitters, a trusted NRHA partner, for publication within the Association’s Rural Health Voices blog