The realities of rural care: A rapidly rising risk

Rural hospitals are facing numerous critical challenges, including limited resources, staffing shortages, and a lack of specialized care, leading to disparities in healthcare access and outcomes. Nearly two thirds of Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) are located in rural areas. Nearly 15% (46 million) of the U.S. population live in rural areas, but only 9% of physicians practice there. And the federal government predicted a shortage of 20,000 primary care physicians in rural areas this year.

Those living in rural areas also tend to be older and have increased risk factors, including higher rates of cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity. These factors, paired with the lack of access to care, have led to a rapidly increasing rural mortality rate that is 20% higher than urban populations and growing.

A driving purpose: Improving rural health inequity

I grew up in Oklahoma, where many people's livelihoods depended on the abundant resources of the Great Plains, including farming, cattle ranching, and other natural resources. This area represents the perfect example of rural America, where the broad geographic divide creates a limit in access to care and health equity. In fact, Oklahoma ranks among the lowest in the nation for health care equity, where less than one-third of Oklahomans’ primary care needs are met. 

With this limited access to care, little is known about the health of many rural Oklahomans — until it is too late and their underlying, or often unknown, conditions have worsened to the point of a hospitalization. The problem is only worsening with 60% of Oklahoma’s rural hospitals at risk of closing, among the worst states in the country.

Fortunately, organizations like Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSU-CHS) are addressing this need head-on, through specialized services and leveraging advanced AI technology to close the inequity gap and enhance the quality of life for rural and underserved communities in Oklahoma.

Timing is everything: Opportunity meets preparation

For more than 25 years, our leadership team’s mission has been to empower clinicians with tools to deliver higher-quality care for the patients who need it most. We created the first touchscreen EMR for Emergency Departments, scaled nationally, and then created the nation’s leading Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) platform, now part of Optum. The RPM results were remarkable, with average reductions of more than 50% in overall care costs and significant decreases in mortality.

Yet, despite these successes, one major RPM barrier remained: Scalability. The high costs of biometric devices and the logistical challenges of deploying them into patients’ homes made it impossible to expand beyond a limited population. The outcomes were impressive, but we couldn't move the needle on population health at scale.

We had pushed the limits of what was possible with the tools available at the time. But something was missing. That missing piece arrived with the emergence of machine learning, offering the ability to recognize patterns at an unprecedented scale, trained on the vast corpus of human healthcare knowledge.

After years of research and development, we have harnessed that power to elevate clinicians even further, exactly as we had envisioned five years ago, enabling the delivery of low-cost whole-person care, population-wide, using only patients’ smartphones.

Device-free care with AI: A game-changer for population health

Our progress would not have been possible without the guiding principles of clinicians and partnerships with organizations on a mission to enhance the quality of life for underserved individuals, such as our friends at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSU-CHS).

For example, OSU-CHS has been dedicated and nationally recognized in placing providers in many Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), but addressing HPSAs requires a multifaceted approach that goes beyond simply increasing the number of clinical providers. 

Mike Shea, DHA, Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives at OSU-CHS, has been leading initiatives to augment provider training and placement with technology and innovation, such as virtual care and AI-powered technology. OSU-CHS is aiming to significantly expand access to high-quality care across the entirety of the state. Leveraging AI and other digital health tools helps them ensure that care is not limited by geography, empowering clinicians to deliver timely, effective, and equitable healthcare to those who need it most.

“Our partnership with Percipio is further closing the gap in access to care,” Shea said. “Their AI-driven technology enables our nursing staff to proactively engage with patients and their providers before conditions worsen. While this tool enhances our ability to care for medium- to high-risk patients, its real power lies in identifying at-risk individuals early, potentially a game-changer for serving the underserved and broadly scaling care population-wide.”

If you are ready to see how Percipio Health can help your organization address rural or population health challenges, please reach out to request more information and a demo, and follow us on LinkedIn.