In an article published by U.S. News & World Report, OnMed CEO Karthik Ganesh highlights how OnMed’s CareStation™ is an 8×10 foot “Clinic‑in‑a‑Box” that is helping address rising emergency department wait times and limited access to care.
The following summarizes key points and perspectives from the original article featured in U.S. News & World Report that was originally published on March 18, 2026 By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder.
Read the full article here
"OnMed's CareStation, also known as the 'clinic-in-a-box,' is an 8×10 foot soundproof unit where a licensed clinician virtually conducts an appointment via telemedicine." — U.S. News & World Report, March 18, 2026
Emergency department wait times are rising. Primary care appointments require a 31-to-90-day wait. And 120 million Americans face barriers to everyday healthcare that have nothing to do with how much they want to get well—and everything to do with whether care is physically accessible at all.
The article examines exactly this problem—and the answer OnMed has been deploying across seven states and Puerto Rico. Her feature profiled the OnMed CareStation™, the tech-enabled, AI-powered, and always human-delivered "Clinic-in-a-Box" that OnMed CEO Karthik Ganesh describes as taking "the best of traditional, in-person care" and "the rapid scalability of telemedicine" and combining them into a single, resolved encounter.
The CareStation is an 8×10 foot soundproof unit. Press the start button, and a licensed clinician appears on a screen. The door shuts. The glass fogs. You're in a private, secure consultation—with a clinician who can see you, assess you, and, in 86% of visits, fully resolve your care without a referral, a follow-up, or an escalation.
The CareStation's integrated diagnostic tools include a digital stethoscope, otoscope, calibrated blood pressure monitoring, pulse oximetry, infrared cameras, and thermal imaging—the same capabilities that distinguish an in-person clinical encounter from a video call. The clinician deploys these tools remotely, with the patient following guided instructions in real time.
As Ganesh described it to U.S. News: "If I say, 'Listen, I've got a cough and congestion showing up,' the clinician now deploys a stethoscope that drops down from the ceiling or from the side. I pull it over, and she tells me exactly how to hold it to my chest. She's now listening to my heart and my lungs in real time."
After each visit, the CareStation self-sanitizes using ultraviolet light between appointments.
"You press the start button, the clinician shows up. The door shuts. The glass fogs. You're now in a private, soundproof, secure environment where you have a one-on-one consult with a clinician on a 65-inch screen." — Karthik Ganesh, CEO of OnMed (As quoted in U.S. News & World Report, March 2026)
U.S. News documented CareStation deployments in charter schools, children's centers, senior centers, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities. That breadth reflects a deliberate design choice: the CareStation's 45-day deployment timeline—requiring only an electrical outlet, no construction, no permits—makes it deployable wherever care is needed most, not just where it's most convenient to build.
With $50 billion in Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funding now flowing to all 50 states, Ganesh sees the CareStation as a ready answer to an urgent build-out window.
"We expect to be an oversized partner for the states as the Rural Health Transformation funds come through, and the states start deploying these in rural America." — Karthik Ganesh, CEO of OnMed (As quoted in U.S. News & World Report, March 2026)
Beginning in Q4 2026, the CareStation will expand to include full outpatient mental health visits with licensed mental health professionals—bringing the same private, stigma-free encounter to behavioral health that it currently delivers for physical conditions.
For Ganesh, the urgency is clear. "We're in the midst of a mental health tsunami of proportions that I don't think we've actually even begun to understand," he told U.S. News.
U.S. News & World Report is one of America's most trusted news organizations, known for its authoritative rankings in healthcare, education, and public policy. It reaches more than 40 million unique monthly visitors, making its independent coverage of the OnMed CareStation™ a meaningful signal for healthcare decision-makers nationwide.
OnMed is transforming how the world accesses healthcare. With its patented OnMed CareStation™, an 8×10 foot “Clinic-in-a-Box”, OnMed delivers comprehensive, immediate care wherever people live, work, and learn. The OnMed CareStation is a tech-enabled, AI-powered, and human-delivered platform that blends the comprehensiveness of traditional in-person care with the rapid scalability of telemedicine. Each CareStation serves as a local access point within a scalable, connected grid that delivers everyday healthcare at scale.
Powered by public-private partnerships across insurers, healthcare providers, governments, employers, and educational institutions, OnMed is redefining healthcare access, closing critical gaps, restoring trust, and strengthening the health and economic resilience of communities everywhere. Learn more at www.onmed.com.
Read the full U.S. News & World Report feature on the OnMed CareStation™ →
Whether you're evaluating on-site care for an employer, a health system, a university, or a rural community—the CareStation is operational within 45 days. Learn How the CareStation Is Being Deployed →
Follow along as we continue to redefine the healthcare landscape and bring the OnMed CareStation to communities across the U.S.
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