The South Carolina Telehealth Alliance is a collaboration of many healthcare organizations working to expand Telehealth across the state.

Since 2014, the SCTA has organized efforts through a statewide strategic plan which allows SCTA members across the state to work collaboratively to expand Telehealth programs, and to align Telehealth, education, broadband, and internet infrastructure and advocacy and awareness efforts.

In 2021, the SCTA launched a new strategic plan format focused on grouping Telehealth services by the value they bring to the state.

In this new series, we will dive into each strategic bucket a little deeper and take a look at the impact these Telehealth programs have brought to South Carolina.

>> Extending services, thought of as what you do here in person, you want to extend that out.

And typically the services in their design are made for the masses.

So you expect hundreds, if not thousands of providers to use the platform and to use the service.

That's different than some of the others because it's not a specific problem you're trying to solve, other than you need to get more out, if that makes sense, so all the services that are intended to be applied across specialties and across lots of different patients and use that large-scale, typically fall under extension services, Narrator>> Service Extension Telehealth programs which became especially popular during the pandemic are used across multiple specialties and strive to provide support to a range of providers across the state.

Currently data collection efforts are underway to identify specific geographic areas of service shortages and to identify how to strategically expand this type of Telehealth in the state moving forward.

>> Our goal with that is to make sure that we have more access points around the state, extending the service of care, making it more convenient, so expanding it, making it easier for folks to access.

>> I remember having this dry cough.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

It was kind of strange because I've never experienced anything like that before.

I said, "You know, this, this covid-19 thing, what I'm hearing about it, you know, it's killing people."

And so, I said, "You know, I wonder if the people really know what's going on."

So, I went and got tested, and they called me back the next day, I was positive.

The remote calling started that day, and they called me every day, I guess, for two weeks.

It was the way they talked.

It was a calming effect, and it, you know, it meant a lot to me.

>> I've been a firefighter for about four years now.

My dad is the fire chief of Santee in Orangeburg County.

So I just kind of grew up in it and it's just been always a part of my life.

Sometimes you go out in the middle of the night not ever knowing what happens in the end.

Like you know you'll go to a call, and you'll get to a certain point, even with a shooting victim or stabbing or vehicle accident, you get to a certain point and you drop them off to the head once and then from that point you just don't know if they survived or not.

I've had one call that's really bothered me where one of my classmates actually died in my arms.

>> The National Foundation for Fallen Firefighters, they reached out to us looking for some Behavioral Health resources.

They were having a really high increase in suicide rates among the fire service.

And we're really just looking for some resources and some partnership to try to figure out how to help this moving forward.

All of our resources are available online.

They're free with the whole purpose that a lot of firefighters aren't going to go in for professional mental health treatment, but they will look at an app and they will get some information through that.

Edwyn >> And I really do feel comfortable talking to them one-on-one about things that I may have gone through.

I cannot see myself doing anything else other than fighting fires.

The brotherhood, the calls helping people...

I honestly cannot do anything else with my life.

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