September 9, 2025
We’d call it a national emergency. We’d mobilize. We’d rebuild.
That’s exactly what’s happening with healthcare. The system is collapsing around us, and somehow, we’ve just accepted it. We are America, and we can do better.
Healthcare access isn’t just broken in rural America—it’s broken everywhere.
• 120+ million Americans—1 in 3—lack adequate access to care.
• 80% of U.S. counties have medical deserts.
• 33% of rural hospitals are at risk of closing.
• 31 days—that’s the average wait for a doctor’s appointment. In some specialties, the wait exceeds two months.
• The national average wait in the Emergency Room is 3 hours, with some hospitals in more urban areas reporting median waits of 8 hours or more.
So let’s be clear with terminology: “underserved” doesn’t just mean small towns or rural ZIP codes.
It means:
• Sitting eight hours in an ER because your child has an ear infection.
• Missing a day’s wages just to see a doctor.
• Driving two hours for urgent care.
• Living in a major city where getting an appointment is a months-long wait.
Underserved is underserved—no matter your ZIP code or your net worth.
We’ve tried to solve access through two main models: traditional brick-and-mortar clinics and virtual care (telehealth). Both are important, but both have hit their limits.
Traditional care? Collapsing under staff shortages, rising clinic costs, and an aging physician workforce nearing retirement. Traditional in-person care can’t scale and is at a breaking point.
Telehealth? Adoption is less than 8%, and it can’t diagnose what requires an actual exam. There are no scans, vitals, or diagnostics of any kind. And millions are left out without viable broadband or a private space for a consultation.
The result? Patients in the middle—with no access, no answers, and no way forward.
What’s missing is a new layer of infrastructure—something that blends the rapid scalability of telehealth with the trust and comprehensiveness of in-person care.
At OnMed, we believe healthcare should be treated like electricity or clean water: a utility every American can rely on.
That’s why we’re building the OnMed Grid—a national health infrastructure that makes sense for America.
• Access Points: Our CareStations are compact “clinics in a box”—private, tech-enabled, and deployable anywhere with an outlet. Schools, workplaces, community centers, transportation hubs—you name it. They bring reliable care closer to where people live and work.
• Service Layer: Behind every CareStation is a clinician network that triages, treats, or routes patients to the optimal site of care. With vitals, biometrics, and high-definition devices, the vast majority of patients are fully diagnosed without requiring an outbound specialist referral.
• Infrastructure Approach: Think of CareStations like nodes all connected by power lines or water mains—extending care into places traditional healthcare has abandoned. This isn’t tech for tech’s sake. This is technology in service of people.
When people can’t reliably get care, the consequences ripple across every part of society.
• Economic cost: Businesses lose an estimated $575 billion annually in productivity because of poor employee health. Payers waste $30-50 billion treating non-emergencies in the ER. Another $320+ billion is lost annually to preventable complications from unmanaged chronic conditions like Diabetes, Heart Disease, COPD, and Hypertension.
• Hospital strain: Emergency rooms overflow with cases that never should’ve been emergencies. Providers burn out. Systems bend until they break.
• Public health threats: Delayed care fuels the spread of chronic disease—and ensures we’ll be unprepared for the next pandemic.
America has never backed down from hard problems. We don’t shrug our shoulders and say, “too difficult.” We invent. We innovate. We rebuild.
It’s time we treated healthcare like the utility it is. It’s time we build the OnMed Grid.
Because underserved is underserved—and every American deserves reliable access to care.
Learn more and check out our CareStation Experience here.
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA)
• Merritt Hawkins Physician Appointment Wait Times Survey
• American Hospital Association (AHA) Rural Hospital Closures Data
• Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI) Productivity Cost of Poor Health
• UnitedHealthGroup Report, The Potential Savings from Avoidable Emergency Department Visits
• RAND Corporation/Health Affairs (2021)
• Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC)
OnMed, the leader in tech-enabled hybrid-healthcare, is expanding access to care through the patented OnMed CareStation®, an 8x10 foot "Clinic-in-a-Box" that brings licensed clinicians and diagnostic tools through a fully integrated device and human platform. Remote clinicians can examine a patient, assess symptoms and provide treatment and prescriptions, blending the comprehensiveness and comfort of a traditional doctor's visit with the rapid scalability of virtual care. OnMed's tech ecosystem, and scalable infrastructure are designed to be deployed in communities where people live, work and gather, bringing access to healthcare without requiring the time, staffing and physical footprint of a traditional clinic. Learn more about OnMed and what we’re building.
Access to healthcare in the United States is not a single problem with a single solution. For the 120 million Americans living without reliable access, the barriers are structural and compounding—distance from care, inability to afford coverage, gaps in insurance, and a fragmented system that demands significant navigation before anyone receives treatment. Solving this requires more than availability. It requires care that can be completed, not simply accessed. The result is delayed care, escalating chronic disease, $168 billion in avoidable emergency department costs annually, and $320 billion or more in preventable complications from unmanaged chronic conditions.
80% of CareStation users have no primary care provider. For many, the CareStation is the first time they have experienced care they can count on. The CareStation operates on dual broadband and satellite connectivity, reaching communities that traditional telehealth cannot serve. It requires no construction, no permanent staffing, and deploys in 45 days (about 60 days for Tribal communities), making it viable for rural counties, tribal lands, correctional facilities, urban underserved neighborhoods, and any community where the infrastructure to deliver care has been absent for decades. The CareStation's 4.96 out of 5 patient satisfaction score reflects what happens when people who have been systematically excluded from the healthcare system finally have a front door. It can be placed in workplaces, educational institutions, government facilities, and community settings.
• 58% of CareStation patients stated they would have otherwise gone to the ER or urgent care—actively removing low-acuity volume from emergency departments and redirecting it to the appropriate, lower-cost setting.
• 86% of patients are fully treated inside the CareStation without redirection to a specialist, urgent care, or emergency department. The CareStation is a self-contained care delivery vehicle that prevents more expensive downstream costs before they become a factor.
• In 5 West Alabama rural communities with CareStation deployments: 1. The CareStation has provided care to 43% of the total population in each community. 2. 6 out of every 10 patients in those communities has no primary care physician and have completed a survey confirming that the CareStation acts as their PCP. 3. 54% have returned within 6 months—creating new access points for underserved patients and showcasing unparalleled level of stickiness with the solution.
CareStations are placed in trusted community locations that people already visit regularly. These include libraries, community and senior centers, employer sites, schools and government facilities. The platform is currently deployed across Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Nevada, South Carolina and Puerto Rico, with expansion underway. Access challenges extend beyond rural geography: approximately 80% of U.S. counties experience some form of healthcare access gap, including urban and suburban areas where long wait times, clinician shortages, high costs or cultural barriers limit access, so locations beyond rural areas are also a strong fit.
Follow along as we continue to redefine the healthcare landscape and bring the OnMed CareStation to communities across the U.S.
