As featured on Spectrum News | By Chris Welch | February 3, 2026
Watch and read the original segment on Spectrum News →
More than a third of Americans live in parts of the country that qualify as health care deserts—places that lack adequate access to primary care doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, or trauma centers. That's where Spectrum News correspondent Chris Welch opened his February 2026 segment on OnMed, and it's the same problem the OnMed CareStation™ was built to solve.
Welch was given a tour of an OnMed CareStation that sits inside a government complex next to the state capitol in Atlanta—one piece of what OnMed calls essentially a health care "Clinic-in-a-Box."
"It's really going to be all about the patient's experience," Dallas Barber, a clinical operations analyst for OnMed, told Spectrum News. "They'll go into some brief medical history. Each of the patients will present their ID. They'll also sign a telehealth consent."
Unlike the telehealth visits most people are used to, the CareStation takes a patient's vitals—blood pressure, oxygen levels, weight, and temperature—and uses a high-definition camera and stethoscope to examine patients in real time. According to Welch's reporting, a typical visit takes about 17 minutes, and once it's over, the entire station goes through a three-minute UV cleaning cycle before the next patient walks in.
Welch's segment centered on the CareStation deployed for Georgia's State Health Benefit Plan, which covers state employees. Last year, that single Atlanta CareStation saw more than 2,500 visits.
"Fifty percent of the people report that they would have gone to the emergency room had this not been here," said Cathy Craven, who runs the health benefit plan for the state of Georgia and its employees.
That figure isn't a one-off. It's the same result OnMed has documented in this exact Georgia deployment elsewhere—independent confirmation, from the person overseeing the plan, that the CareStation is diverting real emergency room visits, not just adding a convenience option.
But Georgia is by no means the only state with a need, Welch reported. The issue is twofold in Alabama: nineteen counties in the state are considered "dead zone areas," according to the health policy nonprofit KFF, meaning they lack not only reliable high-speed internet, but also primary care providers and behavioral health specialists.
"Many people in these communities would have to drive 30 miles just to get access to any care, and that would be an urgent care center," said Hollie Cost, who runs Auburn University's Rural Health Initiative, a program that aims to bring affordable health care to rural Alabama. "Or sometimes they were using emergency rooms. Sometimes they were using fire departments as places to go for health care access."
OnMed CareStations, Cost told Spectrum News, have been "a game changer in some of these communities, and we actually have documentation that it saved lives."
Karthik Ganesh, OnMed's CEO, sees the CareStations as a solution that reaches well beyond any one state or region. "You're looking at ERs that are clogged up," he told Welch. "Seventy percent of the people who show up at the ER are for non-emergent reasons, and the reason they show up at the ER is because they have no place else to go."
He maintains the company's strategy is not solely aimed at rural America. OnMed is starting to put CareStations inside K-12 schools, and big cities have a need as well.
"If we can take one worry off the table—where they now have a CareStation to walk into, get care, 20 minutes in, out, go about the rest of your day—I believe we will have made a difference," he said.
Watch and read the full Spectrum News segment →
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.
See how the CareStation could bring the same on-site, human-delivered access to your state, campus, or community. Connect with the OnMed team →
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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