UCM Digital Health and Rensselaer County Announce Innovative Telehealth Solution for Residents

Telehealth solution provides alternative to 911 and ER visits for non-emergent care, now available to all residents of Rensselaer County.

Troy, NY. (November 1, 2021) – UCM Digital Health (UCM), a leading provider of emergency telemedicine and digital health solutions, and Rensselaer County, will partner to launch renscocares.org, a comprehensive telehealth solution that provides triage and access to top-notch clinical care through UCM’s digital platforms to all Rensselaer County residents. 

RenscoCares provides access to telemedicine platforms from participating regional health insurers and from UCM directly. Residents enrolled in other health plans or those without health insurance are guided to UCM’s proprietary telehealth platform called Sam. This will increase access, reduce cost, and more effectively coordinate all the healthcare resources within the county and drive awareness of effective alternatives to conventional acute care settings like the emergency room or an urgent care center. 

“Municipalities for years have only had one resource for its residents with a medical problem which is 911, designed for true medical emergencies, yet most medical problems that arise are not true medical emergencies,” says Keith Algozzine, PA-C, UCM Digital Health’s Chief Executive Officer. “Patients need a tool to help them in the moment they feel they need care for all the far more common non-medical emergencies, and we are proud to partner with Rensselaer County to provide just that through renscocares.org and UCM’s team of emergency medical providers.” 

Through UCM’s digital-first approach, patients receive the clinical care they need from a team of medical providers that oversee a patient’s complete care journey as it affects both physical and mental health. A comprehensive team of ER doctors, mental health providers, and care coordinators work together to determine the diagnosis and treatment plan for each patient.

“There is a need in our communities to connect people to the right care, at the right place, at the right time when medical or mental health concerns arise,” says Steven F. McLaughlin, Rensselaer County Executive, the chief executive officer for the county. “Through renscocares.org, we are now able to provide navigation to get comprehensive medical care to each and every resident of Rensselaer County regardless of economic status. As our current acute care system is experiencing huge delays in EMS and ER wait times and stressing its overall capacity, this provides faster, convenient and far less costly care to the residents of Rensselaer County.”

RenscoCares is accessed via the web at www.renscocares.org and is also available 24/7 by phone (844-RenscoCares). The site connects patients to their health insurance provider’s care sites or to UCM’s telehealth platform called Sam (goseesam.com, or by downloading Sam by UCM in the app store). In addition, Sam will be useful as a reference point for county departments and other service providers throughout the county.

Through partner platforms and its own Sam platform, UCM’s team of emergency medical providers and care coordinators provide help with the following types of services:

• Prescriptions, labs, and X-rays
• Medical advice 
• Guide patients to lower cost of care settings and resources such as county services, community primary care providers or specialists.
• Work with county EMS agencies to triage, treat and provide care coordination of follow-up services

This program comes because of the successful ER Anywhere telehealth platform that CDPHP, Rensselaer County, and UCM Digital Health launched as a pilot in late 2019. 

The program showed strong results with more than 95 percent of patients either treated or triaged away from the ER, and was recognized by the National Association of Counties (NACo) for the innovative solution the program provided. The program, however, was limited to certain insurers, so it did not fully educate the population at large. Renscocares.org aims to overcome this hurdle by opening up access to all residents in Rensselaer County.

Additionally, at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, CDPHP and MVP Health Care combined forces to offer their members easy access to UCM’s emergency telemedicine services. CDPHP’s ER Anywhere and MVP Health Care’s Gia – both powered by UCM Digital Health – allows patients to connect with emergency medicine trained providers 24/7 from the comfort of their home, ensuring that all patients get appropriate care and timely service, and was essential to the health care system during the pandemic and to this day.

“CDPHP is proud to partner with Rensselaer County and UCM Digital Health to expand access to timely and affordable medicine with the creation of RenscoCares.org. This public-private partnership is a natural extension of our ER Anywhere telemedicine app and provides local patients with a much-needed alternative to the emergency room, saving them time, money, and a lot of headaches.” said CDPHP president and CEO, Dr. John D. Bennett.

“Enabling access to virtual care services through RenscoCares is a monumental step towards helping people get the care they need when and where they need it,” said MVP Health Care’s President and CEO, Chris Del Vecchio. “As we continue to face the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health care system in our region, offering telemedicine to County residents through this partnership is a great way to highlight an alternative to the emergency room or urgent care and we applaud UCM and Rensselaer County for their efforts.”