This commentary is by Christine Hallquist of Burlington. She was the Democratic nominee for Vermont governor in 2018, and was CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative for 13 years.

You’re home alone when you start having pain and tightness in your chest. It’s spreading to your shoulder, and you’re nauseous. You’re having a heart attack, and if you don’t get help immediately, it may be too late. The first thing you should do is call 911, which requires a reliable phone and/or broadband connection. Unfortunately, in Vermont, not everyone has one yet.

Vermont Community Broadband Board is working to change that, which will give every Vermonter access to telehealth. If you’re at high risk for a heart attack, your doctor might recommend virtual monitoring, which would automatically alert first responders of a heart attack. And that is just one of the benefits and ways that telehealth can revolutionize health care for Vermonters. 

In Vermont, almost everyone has insurance, but many can’t find or afford care. Vermonters pay some of the highest prices nationwide for individual health coverage. The monthly cost of a typical plan on the state’s insurance marketplace has doubled over the past six years — from $474 to $948. Nine of the state’s 14 hospitals are losing money, and the state’s largest insurer is struggling to remain solvent. 

“There is no hospital in Vermont that is not in jeopardy,” said Dr. Bruce Hamory, who authored a recent report on Vermont’s health care system. Hamory’s recommendation: push as much care out of the hospitals as possible and regionalize Vermont’s siloed hospital system.

Telehealth can transform health care in Vermont. It enables patients to connect with health care providers remotely. This can greatly reduce barriers to care for rural residents, who often face significant challenges due to long distances to health care facilities. 

By enabling regular check-ins and remote monitoring of chronic conditions, complications can be caught early, allowing for prompt intervention and preventing serious issues. Patients can quickly consult with specialists located far away, reducing wait times and expediting diagnosis and treatment plans. Telehealth check-ins and remote monitoring after hospitalization can help recovery, identify complications early and prevent unnecessary readmissions. 

Telehealth is safer. Less travel means fewer car accidents and less pollution. It also means less disease spread, crucial for the chronically ill, pregnant, elderly or immuno-compromised 

Telemedicine can connect patients experiencing emergencies with providers for immediate assessment and guidance, leading to faster and more appropriate interventions. Real-time reporting of vitals, such as temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure during transport helps reduce unnecessary visits and enables professionals to prepare for intake. 

Patients with heart failure can use wearable devices to monitor vital signs and be constantly reviewed using artificial intelligence. This can trigger intervention, including rapid evaluation of stroke symptoms by neurologists, leading to faster diagnosis and treatment, potentially minimizing neurological damage. Remote monitoring can also be used for patients with epilepsy, and orthodontists are using a piece of hardware in a patient’s mouth to monitor for more than 137 possible issues that can arise.

Teletherapy can provide mental health services to people who might otherwise not get treatment due to stigma or geographic barriers, potentially preventing crises. Teledermatology allows individuals to share images of skin abnormalities remotely, facilitating early diagnosis of potentially serious conditions, such as cancer. 

Internet access is increasingly recognized as a “super determinant” of health. Additional benefits include the ability to have family members or caregivers at a patient’s appointment, even if they live far away. And seeing a patient in their home gives providers a more complete picture of the patient’s life in order to provide more personalized care. 

Telehealth is also better for providers. Fewer physical facilities mean lower costs. Telehealth will reduce unnecessary/expensive emergency room visits because of increased preventive care. Continuous patient monitoring and quick detection will reduce expensive interventions. 

It’s important to understand there is only one technology that can meet the demands of telehealth: fiber-optic networks. Their high speed, reliability, low latency, immense bandwidth capacity and resistance to interference allow faster data transmission with minimal signal degradation. 

Fiber optics allow for virtually infinite capacity, much more than DSL, wireless, cable, or low earth orbit satellite, and reliably transfer large files, real-time video and real-time monitoring of vitals. Fiber-optic networks are much faster and less prone to interference, ensuring a stable and consistent connection. The last thing you want when you are monitoring a patient is an interruption in the data stream. 

Fiber-optic networks can carry large volumes of data without significant performance degradation. Signal quality remains high over long distances, allowing it to perform in extreme weather conditions and emergencies. And fiber lasts significantly longer than other cable types like copper. 

Fiber-optic networks are scalable and can be upgraded without requiring extensive infrastructure changes, ensuring long-term adaptability. Additionally, the rapid advancements in fiber-optic technology hardware make them ready to support new standards and applications, paving the way for future growth and innovation, as they enable telehealth to revive the sustainability and accessibility of Vermont’s health care system.