Ambulatory Conversion To Telehealth

As SC residents were encouraged to stay home, healthcare providers quickly worked to convert outpatient clinic operations to telehealth to maintain continuity of care and connection with patients while adhering to social distancing recommendations. The conversion of ambulatory healthcare operations to telehealth was perhaps the largest collective telehealth undertaking across South Carolina, involving a wide array of SCTA partners from large health systems to community health center networks to small private practices. As video visits were quickly deployed across the state in response to suspending in-person encounters, thousands of healthcare providers were onboarded to their respective telehealth platforms.

Across South Carolina, healthcare providers are estimated to have completed over 1,200,000 synchronous ambulatory telehealth visits during 2020.

SC Department of Mental Health’s Ambulatory Telehealth Programs

SC Department of Mental Health’s Community Telepsychiatry Program (CTP) rapidly enhanced its community-based and school mental health services by equipping providers to extend their capabilities to provide services directly to patients in their homes, as well as into clinics and schools.

Throughout 2020, the CTP provided approximately 250,000 services via telehealth.

SCTA Extends Doxy.Me Instance

To support the widescale conversion of ambulatory care to telehealth, the SCTA extended a premium instance of the telehealth video platform, Doxy.Me, to providers across SC. This was very positively received, especially by smaller and more rural healthcare providers. The SCTA has received almost 1,500 requests for accounts, and during 2020 providers completed over 90,000 visits using the SCTA instance of this platform.