Ascension Expands Virtual Care Infrastructure Across Nine States
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The initiative spans Ascension’s network of 110 hospitals and nearly 2,000 care sites, enabling clinicians to deliver care across multiple facilities and electronic health record (EHR) systems without switching platforms.
Ascension is building a virtual care infrastructure layer across nine states as the health system expands specialty telehealth services and integrates virtual care into its core clinical operations.
The initiative spans Ascension’s network of 110 hospitals and nearly 2,000 care sites, enabling clinicians to deliver care across multiple facilities and electronic health record (EHR) systems without switching platforms.
According to Krisda Chaiyachati, MD, associate vice president of clinical transformation at Ascension, the infrastructure allows virtual specialists to move between patient consultations across states without separate EHR logins or fragmented workflows.
Ascension’s virtual care programs currently include teleneurology, telepsychiatry, teleinfectious disease, and same-day virtual care services across both acute and ambulatory settings.
The organization said the effort represents a shift beyond pandemic-era telehealth expansion toward embedding virtual care into long-term workforce strategy and clinical delivery models.
The infrastructure is also being used to address physician shortages by allowing centralized virtual teams to extend specialty services across markets. Ascension said some clinicians are increasingly practicing primarily through virtual care models while remaining integrated with bedside teams.
In stroke care, for example, onsite nurses coordinate with remote neurologists during virtual evaluations and treatment planning.
The health system said its goal is to make the technology layer largely invisible to patients while ensuring providers can access patient histories, imaging, laboratory results, and clinical data in real time.
Ascension also said accessibility remains central to its virtual care strategy, particularly for underserved, rural, uninsured, Medicaid, and Medicare populations.
“We’re really designing for low-income populations, uninsured populations, Medicaid populations, Medicare populations to be able to access care in a different way,” Chaiyachati said.
Rather than replacing in-person visits, Ascension views virtual care as part of a broader care continuum that can transition patients into physical care settings when necessary.
The organization is also expanding virtual support for care transitions, including hospital-to-home and emergency department-to-home care models.
Chaiyachati said the system does not see virtual care as a standalone offering but as an integrated component of healthcare delivery moving forward.
Ascension operates across multiple states in the US and continues to expand specialty access programs as healthcare systems increasingly use virtual infrastructure to manage workforce shortages and improve care accessibility.
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