Telehealth in Libraries
About Our Initiative
Due to the rural nature of Idaho, many communities lack sufficient medical and mental health care services to meet the needs of their residents. For many rural Idahoans, accessing these services requires long wait times for a local provider (if they exist) or traveling a long distance both ways to reach a clinic or hospital. Vulnerable populations such as the elderly or disabled, have additional hurdles seeking health care due to lack of independence and capabilities to transport themselves to appointments. These barriers can ultimately lead some Idaho residents to choose not to seek services like mental health care, preventative check-ups, or support for managing chronic conditions like diabetes.
Connecting patients and doctors through telehealth is one way to overcome these barriers. However, while some patients may be able to access telehealth services from their home, others may lack sufficient internet speeds, may not have appropriate devices, may not have good enough digital literacy skills, or may lack privacy or a quiet space within their home. Libraries can help bridge this gap by providing a safe, private, reliable location to access telehealth services with staff who can help patients use the technology. As highly-trusted and well-connected institutions within their community, libraries are a perfect place to build or expand a community’s telehealth infrastructure.
The Idaho Commission for Libraries is working across the state with a variety of partners to build a solid foundation for telehealth in libraries. Our projects included the Telehealth Trailblazer’s pilot project funded by the Blue Cross Foundation for Health, as well as the Upgrade Your Space project in partnership with the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare. In addition to these projects, the ICfL is undertaking the following broad activities to support this initiative:
- Create a strong network of community partners across a variety of sectors to support and sustain the initiative, including government, nonprofit, and healthcare.
- Explore and develop a variety of models for implementing telehealth in libraries, to suit a variety of communities and libraries.
- Invest in the physical infrastructure of libraries to create private, digitally-enabled telehealth spaces in their communities.
- Develop the skills and knowledge of the ICfL staff to provide consultation and technical assistance to Idaho libraries around telehealth projects.
We welcome anyone with an interest in this project to reach out to us. We’d love to talk to you about any or all of the above activities and how you or your organization can get involved. For more information, please contact Chelsea Summerlin at chelsea.summerlin@libraries.idaho.gov.
LITT: Telehealth Chats
LITT: Telehealth Chats are an opportunity for libraries and partner organizations to connect about telehealth by sharing resources, successes, and challenges. All libraries are welcome to attend at any stage of their telehealth journey, from those exploring if telehealth is a good fit for their library, to those who have fully functional telehealth programs up and running. On occasion, we may have guest speakers and experts from the healthcare world in attendance as well. These meetings are open to libraries at all phases of implementing a telehealth access point in their facility and will be announced via the libidaho list serve, and posted on our agency calendar as they are scheduled.
This periodic chat is part of a larger initiative called Libraries in Idaho Talking Trends (LITT), so if you can’t make it this month, hopefully you can drop in another time. Also, if you have ideas for future chats, send them our way!
For questions related to telehealth or these LITT chats, please contact Chelsea Summerlin at (208) 639-4175 or email chelsea.summerlin@libraries.idaho.gov.
