STURGEON BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine, and improving rural health were both discussed at a roundtable in Door County on Friday.
U.S. Health & Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan stressed the importance of telehealth in rural communities.
“We went from 14,000 telehealth beneficiaries at the first week of March to over 10 billion beneficiaries now nationwide,” Hargan said.
It’s numbers like those bringing one of the country’s top health officials to Door County.
Hargan joined Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher and Door County medical center CEO Brian Stephens on Friday.
Friday’s roundtable comes about a month after the President announced a push to increase healthcare access in rural areas, and about a week after Trump announced a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.
“The telehealth side is a flexibility that we’re working on more broadly,” said Hargan. “And that’s more of almost a cultural change in American healthcare.”
Hargan says the potential coronavirus vaccine isn’t related to the push for expanding telehealth.
While the call for expansion has been echoed by Democrats in the past, it’s been questioned by leading medical professionals, including the Trump administration’s leading telehealth advocate.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid administrator Seema Verma says, “I don’t think it is ever going to replace in-person visits, because sometimes a doctor needs to put hands on a patient.”
Still, Gallagher says while he’s cautiously optimistic on a coronavirus vaccine
“All of us as individual Wisconsinites still need to be doing what we can in terms of basic hygiene, washing our hands, mask wearing, respecting our neighbors until we get to that point where a vaccine is widely deployed.”
Comments