GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Cherry Well being has acquired a $2 million grant from the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies to broaden telehealth companies.
The clinic, which has 20 places and serves sufferers no matter their means to pay, will use the funding to enhance its on-line affected person portal, provide distant glucose screens to sufferers with diabetes, and supply laptops or pill computer systems (in addition to web entry) to sufferers with extreme psychological sickness, mentioned Invoice Joure, chief working officer at Cherry Well being.
“I feel it’s considerably of a recognition that telehealth is a viable different to in-person medication in quite a lot of circumstances,” Joure mentioned. “Telehealth is right here to remain, and actually the main target of that is on serving to us enhance the best way that we ship healthcare by way of telehealth.”
Created in 1988, Cherry Well being is a nonprofit, Federally Certified Well being Middle. Its companies embody major care, girls’s well being, pediatrics, dental, imaginative and prescient, behavioral well being and 5 school-based well being applications. It has greater than 20 places, nearly all of that are in Kent County, and it served greater than 55,000 sufferers final 12 months.
Federally Certified Well being Facilities obtain funds from the federal Well being Assets and Companies Administration to supply care in underserved areas. Federally Certified Well being Facilities should present care on a sliding charge scale primarily based on a affected person’s means to pay, they usually should function underneath a governing board that features sufferers, in response to the Well being Assets and Companies Administration.
Like different healthcare suppliers, Cherry Well being expanded its telehealth companies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, President and CEO Tasha Blackmon mentioned in a information launch.
“In some ways, this funding is level-setting, in that it permits us to make some much-needed investments in expertise that may take away limitations to complete, high quality healthcare for the sufferers we serve,” she mentioned.
Cherry Well being has accomplished over 200,000 medical and behavioral well being telehealth visits because the pandemic started in March 2020. Practically 1 / 4 of Cherry Well being’s visits final 12 months had been telehealth visits, officers mentioned.
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