Built for Rural Health
Rural health is who we are at Avera. We are committed to delivering quality health care in rural locations across the Upper Midwest.
How We Do It
An aerial view of Avera’s 72,000-square-mile footprint across South Dakota and four surrounding states might illustrate it best: only 0.1% of that vast space, or around 73 square miles, is urban.
“Sioux Falls is an urban referral setting for health care, yet we have locations in 100 communities that are important in the care we provide,” said Kevin Post, DO, Avera’s Chief Medical Officer.
Avera leverages its community and rural locations to deliver quality care, closer to home. “People want to receive care as close to home as possible, and sometimes the best care setting is actually in the home. More and more, Avera is taking remote care technology and expertise to people at home rather than in clinics and hospitals,” Post said.
“We have 37 hospitals and over 90% of those hospitals are critical access hospitals with 25 beds or fewer, so we understand rural,” said Rachael Sherard, Senior Vice President for Rural Health at Avera. “One in every 40 critical access hospitals in the country are in the Avera system. We are rural health care and we excel at delivering high quality rural care efficiently."
Rural Care Close to Home
Avera’s rural locations are designed to deliver most of the care that most people need. This includes primary care clinics; 24/7 emergency departments; and hospitals that deliver care such as inpatient and outpatient surgery, outpatient procedures like colonoscopy, women’s care, therapy, infusions and cardiac rehabilitation. Some facilities efficiently share core services, such as lab or imaging, between hospital, clinic and long-term care. This includes new health campuses in Gregory and Gettysburg, SD.
“Health care is often a major employer in the community, giving residents a vibrant place to work where they can care for their friends and neighbors,” Post said.
Touchpoints for Rural Health Care
When they need a higher level of care, patients have access to all system resources through a variety of means:
- Telemedicine: Specialty consults are available via telemedicine in a number of specialties. Rural providers also get telemedicine support in emergency medicine, hospitalist, critical care and more. Telemedicine is also available in long-term care settings.
- Outreach: Avera specialists do regularly scheduled in-person visits in rural sites in a number of specialties such as orthopedics, cancer, heart and vascular care, kidney care and dialysis, and more. Avera reaches out to rural locations with vital services such as mobile mammography.
- Home care: Avera@Home offers home health and hospice care through 28 locations. More access to virtual visits and home monitoring technology supports high quality care at home.
- Cancer care: Care protocols are standardized according to evidence-based practices. Radiation therapy equipment is connected as part of a single platform so patients can get the same high level of care, regardless of which center is closest to them.
- Air transport: Careflight was started 35 years to ensure all residents of South Dakota and the wider region have more equal access to lifesaving care. Today, rotor-wing and fixed-wing aircraft are stationed at bases in Sioux Falls, Aberdeen and Pierre, SD. Bringing state-of-the-art technology where people need it, the aircraft made 2,600 transports in the past year, flying 310,000 miles.
“Rural is in our DNA. It’s core to who we are and our mission. When the Sisters came to Dakota Territory in the 1880s, they came on a mission of education. Yet when faced with immense health care needs including diphtheria and influenza epidemics of the day, they began opening hospitals on the rural landscape of the Upper Midwest,” Sherard said.
