2026-08-11T11:01:00
(BPT) – Imagine being an older adult in rural West Virginia with chronic health conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Your conditions need regular monitoring, but the nearest clinic is 90 minutes away — on a good day. When new symptoms arise, along with elevated blood pressure, how do you manage traveling to access necessary medical care?
“The truth is, in many rural communities, it’s often easier and faster to have a pizza delivered than it is to access the healthcare people depend on,” said Darren Sabo, CEO of Primefocus Health, the first venture spinout from LG NOVA, LG Electronics’ North America Innovation Center.
For the 1 in 5 Americans living in rural areas, this is the reality. If you’re managing a chronic illness, the nearest specialist could be a two-hour drive away. If you don’t have reliable transportation, or can’t take a full day off work, you wait — and hope nothing gets worse.
A whopping 80% of rural America is medically underserved, leading to poorer health outcomes. Rural residents are more likely than urban residents to die early from causes like heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory disease or stroke. While other factors may contribute to this higher health risk, access to healthcare remains one of the biggest challenges.
Rural hospitals and health systems continue to face workforce shortages, hospital closures, financial pressures and infrastructure limitations that worsen the situation.
What it’s really like on the ground
For rural healthcare teams in 2026, the challenge isn’t awareness — it’s capacity. Nurses and care coordinators often manage caseloads that would be difficult anywhere, with limited resources and backup support far away. Adding new programs or technology tools to an already stretched team, without redesigning how that care gets delivered, tends to make things harder rather than easier.
For patients, the barriers are immediate. Long distances, unreliable transportation and limited primary care providers and specialists as well as limited broadband/internet access aren’t merely inconveniences — they’re why people delay care, skip follow-ups and end up in emergency rooms for conditions that could have been managed earlier.
“In parts of Appalachia, patients sometimes travel hours for appointments that take just minutes,” added Sabo. “The math doesn’t work, and most of the systems built to help them haven’t seriously reckoned with that.”
The pandemic introduced digital tools including telehealth, which has seen success in increased appointment completion in some rural areas. However, challenges to adopting new technology persist, including patient education and broadband access. West Virginia, for example, ranks 50th nationally in broadband access. And technology isn’t the complete answer: Personal relationships with healthcare providers remain crucial.
Finding solutions that put patient needs first
A rural healthcare transformation requires technology and a nourishing human connection. Digital health innovations are one piece of the puzzle, but technology alone won’t solve healthcare access challenges in underserved communities.
Solutions need to be designed for the people who need them. Programs producing real results share something in common: They start by asking what patients will actually use and care teams can sustain and build from there.
Primefocus Health is one such solution, reimagining how healthcare happens beyond the clinic by empowering providers and patients through a trusted and customizable digital health platform that bridges the gap between hospital and home. Primefocus Health is building a connected ecosystem where patients can access care, education and remote monitoring tools from home, and providers gain insights they need to guide recovery and improve health outcomes before they become an issue, instead of after.
Technology as a tool, not a substitute for human care
For rural healthcare organizations already operating with limited staffing and growing patient demand, technology adoption — from telehealth appointments and remote patient monitoring (RPM) to AI-powered medical scribes and more — only works when solutions fit naturally into clinical workflows and help providers work more efficiently.
AI and RPM tools must help care teams:
- identify high-risk patients faster
- streamline decision-making
- expand care capacity
- improve outcomes without increasing operational strain
“We’re not trying to replace the current healthcare infrastructure and healthcare workers,” said Sabo. “We’re trying to enhance their abilities.”
This operational-first approach is increasingly important as rural hospitals seek scalable healthcare innovation strategies that really work, despite resource limitations.
One model for a connected care program
In rural Appalachia, a connected care program from Primefocus Health in partnership with the Marshall Health Network is serving patients across West Virginia, southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky to put that idea to the test. Its goal is simple: make it easier for patients managing chronic conditions to stay connected with their care team without making travel the price of admission.
The results were tangible:
- Patients stayed engaged.
- Chronic conditions were better managed.
- People who had been driving hours for routine follow-ups were receiving consistent support closer to home.
What made it work wasn’t the technology alone. It worked because the program was designed with the health system from the start, built around what care teams could realistically sustain, and held to the standard of whether patients were actually doing better.
“Technologies like AI and RPM have enormous potential, but only when implemented thoughtfully, responsibly and with clinical realities in mind,” said Sabo. “The question worth asking is a simple one: Is it actually designed for the people who need it most?”
Rural healthcare is being reimagined right now — in policy, in funding and in technology being deployed across communities that have been underserved for decades.
Learn how Primefocus Health is supporting rural healthcare transformation at PrimefocusHealth.com.
