WESTERN MASS.  –  A North Adams-based company is hoping to make medical care accessible to those in more rural areas of Western Massachusetts.

Zayed Yasin is an emergency physician who works for Medtigo, a gap staffing service company that works with hospitals across Massachusetts. He said in his work he spent some time in Hampshire County, including South Hadley. When Medtigo created Medtigo Care, a subscription service that provides families with access to high quality online healthcare, Yasin said he “thought this might be interesting to people in the area.”

The purpose of the service, he said, is to give residents in areas that aren’t as close to hospitals, quality medical care from professionals who know them. “I think that we're trying to bring together both the future and the past at the same time: doctors who know their patients, patients who know their doctors,” he said. “Access to healthcare is never really easy, the emergency room is never really pleasant.”

However, Yasin said the COVID-19 pandemic has and is continuing to change the way people think about access to healthcare. “There is a better way, COVID is making us take the steps to fix it,” he said.

One topic of conversation that has emerged amid the pandemic has been regarding how people across regions access their healthcare. This, Yasin said, impacts people who tend to live in more rural settings and/or have to drive a longer distance to have access to emergency healthcare. This, he said, happens within Western Massachusetts. “I think that there are great hospitals around, but I think that when you’re a little bit further from the bigger hospitals, access isn’t easy,” he said.

He said the subscription service would not be best for those seeking primary care or more significant illnesses that cannot be treated easily at home. However, it would be for those who need treatment for fevers, infections, colds, COVID–19, bronchitis and in some cases stitches. “It’s really mostly what you’d need for most kinds of urgent and lighter weight emergency care,” he said. “So if you're worried about having a heart attack, that’s obviously not what this is.”

This, he explained, will give people who are further away from emergency rooms more access to emergency care. “People who are in small towns, there’s more of a need for nights, weekend hours,” he said.

Yasin said while access to care is important, what is just as important is the doctor-patient relationships. He said while there’s been a lot of talk about telemedicine and its importance in the past few months, a lot of it has been focused on meetings with doctors patients have never met. “There’s been a lot of talk in telemedicine in the last couple of months, [but a] lot of it are Skype calls with a stranger. The doctor doesn’t know the patient,” he said.

Yasin said when a patient signs up for the service,  they will receive a customized medical kit for their home. The kit, which he said is personalized for each family and their needs, is small enough to put in their cupboard at home and to travel with them in the car should they need. He said these needs are discussed during the patient’s enrollment visit. Such items that may be included in the patient’s kit may include cardiac monitors of health problems, a digital stethoscope and medications.

“You can predict the thing that people are most likely to need. Rather than having to run out in the middle of the night, we prescribe it for you [and] then you have it there. Not to take willy nilly, but when you need it,” he said.

Having such a kit, Yasin said, could even help in situations that would typically require a visit to an emergency room such as a cut that required glue. “Having the tech in the home, we can do a lot more than would have otherwise required a trip into the ER, or a trip to urgent care. Now we can do it all at the home. When you go, you get someone to look at and assess the wound,” he said. “A lot of the times we’re closing it with medical-grade glue. We can look at it, if they have glue in the kit we can walk them through it. You need to have access to glue and someone who can walk you through it. It’s not the hardest thing, but you need to have access.”

He said in addition to saving someone time and money they would have spent in the emergency room, it also empowers people to take control of their own health. “We can save someone the three or four hours in the ER, or God knows whatever their copay is. We want to empower people to take care of their own health. Things that people have to do for themselves,” he said. “I think it’s really empowering for people that have that ability where you get advice and guidance from people you really know.

Yasin said that while people in South Hadley could benefit from the subscription service, the problems with healthcare access are not specific to that community, but problems faced “all across Central Massachusetts.” He said, “It’s relevant, people face a lot of the challenges.”

Once people sign up for the service, Yasin said they will be able to call or text during the hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. This, he said, allows doctors and patients to stay engaged and makes following up with patients easier.  He said during normal visits “you get your 10 to 15 minutes and that’s it.” He said, “That’s not the way health really works, things kind of go on from day to day.”

“In normal healthcare visits you can’t do that. You can’t have home visits every day, [and] you can’t come to the clinic every day,” he said.

However, with a new healthcare model comes challenges. One of those challenges, Yasin said, is that the model “doesn’t fit the way insurance companies and billing works.” Unfortunately, that means cost for the subscription service comes out of pocket for those who wish to enroll in the program. The upside, however, is that for unlimited access subscribers will only pay $50 a month.

Yasin said the initial launch date was postponed due to the conditions of the world at the moment, they were aiming for a December launch to ensure everything goes smoothly. At the moment, he said, they were in the process of launching a trial in order to work out all the potential issues they may run into. “We’re getting to launch our trial, [we] had to postpone a little bit to make sure we have everything perfect,” he said. “We’re not going to launch until we make sure we have everything together, everyone on call.”

He said with the program, they’re hoping to change the way healthcare is accessed by all. “Access and care that used to be available for the wealthy, and we want everyone to have the same kind of access,” he said. Eventually, he hopes to expand the program across the state. More information about the program can be found at https://care.medtigo.com.