Speaker 1: I think we're going to stop saying, why do we have to do this via telehealth, now to, why don't we just do this via telehealth? I think people are really going to see the benefits of it. I think it is no longer the future. I think it is our present way of doing things, and I think that is wonderful. And I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Speaker 2: Before COVID, we were actually in our emergency departments and the inpatient units, such as our medical, surgical, and intensive care units, using telepsychiatry.

Speaker 3: We immediately started to see, just like pretty much everybody across the country, that this would be a way to reach into people's homes when they could not come out of their home, or we wouldn't want them to come out of their home.

Speaker 1: I help train and onboard new providers that need to learn platforms to perform telehealth.

Speaker 4: So during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to make some changes for our patients' safety, as well as our own. We have limited approximately two people at a time coming in to check in. They do have distance of, you know, six feet between themselves.

Speaker 5: Prior to the pandemic, what I did was I helped build infrastructures of care, specialty care, throughout the state of South Carolina through telehealth. And some of the examples of that is cardiology, hospitalist care, palliative care, psych, neuro, and stroke. And that's just to name a few. We have so many services that we provide across the state of South Carolina through telehealth.

Speaker 6: We were hard at work developing those programs in order to get care out to all South Carolinians well before this pandemic hit. I think this gave us an advantage in the fight because we've been able to reconfigure and utilize those existing programs in order to best address the needs of our patients and our community.

Speaker 2: We have been able to launch telepsychiatry services from our five outpatient clinics to the patient's home. Both our providers and our patients have found this to be a great experience for them, and we've really been able to get to know some of our patients in their home environment.

Speaker 3: We set up telehealth for our whole entire system, really within two to three days,

Speaker 7: and began providing visits by video very quickly. Our practices are now able to offer both telephone and video visits. We went from having about four to ten visits a day via telehealth, where we are now seeing about 2,000 patients a day with video visits, and another 700 patients per day over the telephone.

Speaker 4: We have, to this day, completed approximately 250 telehealth visits.

Speaker 8: One of the biggest benefits for my patients and me has been time. Some of my patients are living upwards of 40 to 50 miles away, so saving them that drive is probably pretty huge.

Speaker 9: It's been able to allow us to continue high-quality health care in a safe way during these uncertain times, and I believe utilization of telehealth services has been something good to come from this COVID-19 pandemic. If our patients are already signed up with our portal called MyChart, they can video chat with me from home.

Speaker 2: There's always talking on the phone, but nothing replaces seeing your doctor's smiling face. It's been a game-changer.