Access Amplified

Designing Digital Health for Every Language: Embedding Equity Into Virtual Care, with Carolina Daza of Corewell Health

For more than a decade, Carolina Daza has worked at the intersection of interpretation, patient advocacy, and telemedicine. Starting her career as a healthcare interpreter, she witnessed firsthand how vulnerable patients feel when they can’t fully understand what’s happening in a clinical setting. That experience now fuels her work inside Corewell Health’s virtual care ecosystem. In this conversation, Carolina explains why language access in digital health must go far beyond translation. It means designing simple patient journeys, integrating interpreters directly into telemedicine platforms, and ensuring consistent, seamless access across video visits, patient portals, and remote care programs. She shares the behind-the-scenes reality of pushing for system-wide integration — navigating approvals, aligning technical teams, coordinating multiple vendors, and even restarting years of work when the system switched language access partners. Most powerfully, Carolina describes the moment a clinician told her how a newly integrated “interpreter button” made it possible to finally reach a patient who had been unreachable for months. For her, that single story mattered as much as any metric. The takeaway: language access isn’t an add-on. It must be built into digital health from day one — as a shared responsibility across clinical, IT, and patient experience teams. Meet Carolina Daza Carolina Daza, Senior Virtual Health Specialist at Corewell Health in West Michigan, brings more than 20 years of healthcare expertise—and plenty of heart—to everything she does. Born in Chile and proudly Latina, Carolina moved to the United States in the early 90s, where her curiosity, resilience, and passion for helping others took root. Today, she blends her cultural perspective and deep experience to make healthcare more accessible. Since joining the Virtual Health team in 2015, Carolina has been a driving force behind the growth of telemedicine across West Michigan. She has successfully launched numerous outpatient virtual clinics, making it easier than ever for patients to get the care they need when they need it. Over the years, Carolina has partnered with multiple teams, departments, and clinical specialties across Corewell Health to establish consistent, high-quality care via telemedicine—ensuring providers and patients alike experience seamless virtual workflows. Carolina also played a key role in integrating TytoCare across Corewell Health West and has spent the last five years implementing innovative virtual health programs with both internal teams and employer partners across Michigan—delivering outstanding results and transforming the way care is delivered. In addition to her program leadership, she continues to take on critical operational roles in launching and optimizing new digital and virtual-care platforms across Corewell Health, helping drive systemwide innovation and adoption. With a blend of expertise, compassion, and unstoppable energy, Carolina continues to bridge the gap between patients and the often-complex world of healthcare—one virtual visit at a time.

From Hospitals to Hallways: Building Virtual Care That Works in Rural Communities, with Dr. Bradley Anderson and Jared Droze of OSU

When most people think about virtual care, they picture video visits replacing in-person appointments. But at Oklahoma State University, virtual care is something much bigger — a distributed ecosystem designed to keep care local in a largely rural state.  In this conversation, Jared Droze and Dr. Brad Anderson share how OSU built a virtual hospitalist program that supports rural and critical access hospitals with real-time clinical expertise. By combining direct virtual patient evaluations with consultative support, OSU has helped hospitals reduce unnecessary transfers, increase clinical confidence, and keep patients closer to their families, all while strengthening hospital sustainability. The episode also explores how OSU has extended virtual care beyond hospital walls. From urgent care clinics that use virtual clinicians to improve patient flow, to school-based virtual care programs that help kids get treated without leaving school, OSU is rethinking where and how care can happen. Across every model, the goal remains the same: meet patients where they are, reduce friction, and design virtual care that works in the real world.  Meet our speakers Dr. Bradley Anderson Bradley Anderson is a board-certified Internal Medicine physician with a background deeply rooted in rural Missouri. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Health Science, specializing in Radiology, from Missouri Southern State University. Following that, he pursued his medical education at Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine in North Carolina, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at Oklahoma State University. His career journey led him to join the faculty at Oklahoma State University, where he now serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and hold multiple administrative roles including Medical Director of Virtual Care, Vice Chair of the OSUMC Internal Medicine Department, and Medical Director of the Hospitalist at Cleveland Area Hospital. His commitment lies in bridging the healthcare gap in underserved communities, particularly through the innovative avenue of Virtual Care, ensuring that specialized medical expertise reaches those who need it most. Jared Droze With over 15 years of progressive leadership experience in healthcare operations, Jared has successfully driven innovation and growth across hospital, outpatient, academic, and virtual care settings. Skilled in strategic operations, physician alignment, and performance management, he has consistently improved financial performance, patient outcomes, and team cohesion in both non-profit and for-profit environments. Currently serving as the Director of Virtual Care at OSU Medicine, Jared is passionate about leveraging technology and collaborative strategies to enhance healthcare accessibility and delivery. Jared holds a Master's in Healthcare Administration from Oklahoma State University – Center for Health Sciences and is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Nurse-Led Innovation Isn’t Optional, It’s the Future, with Dr. Bonnie Clipper

Bonnie Clipper is a nationally recognized innovation strategist, nurse leader, and founder of Innovation Advantage. In this episode, she shares why nurses are the key to meaningful digital transformation — and how healthcare systems can empower them to drive it. From breaking down organizational silos to building cultures of innovation that actually stick, Bonnie’s perspective is sharp, practical, and rooted in real-world change. Digital health is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s working. In this episode, Dr. Bonnie Clipper pulls back the curtain on what actually makes innovation succeed or fail in healthcare settings. Drawing from her experience inside and outside of health systems, she challenges the idea that digital health is a standalone concept. "This is just health now," she says, and that means we need to teach it, design it, and support it differently. Dr. Clipper argues that nurses, often sidelined in tech decisions, are essential to solving access and equity challenges. They’re closest to patients. They know the problems. And, as she puts it, they already have the solutions if systems would only listen. She shares how shared governance, protected time, and human-centered design can all be practical levers for surfacing nurse-led ideas and making them stick. She also unpacks the biggest roadblocks: tech tools implemented without purpose, poor change management, and a reluctance to empower frontline staff. But Dr. Clipper is hopeful. Across the U.S. and internationally, she’s seeing nurse innovators take the lead, and she’s here to help more of them do it. Meet Bonnie Clipper Bonnie founded Innovation Advantage after more than 20 years as a Chief Nurse Executive when she had the opportunity to commit to innovation during her RWJF Executive Nurse Fellowship and then jumped at the chance to become an ASU/AONL Executive Fellow in Innovative Health Leadership.  Her one-of-a-kind skill-set brings decades of operational experience, bundled with her expertise in nursing innovation and experience in academics.  She is a trailblazer and was the first Vice President of Innovation at the American Nurses Association, where she created an innovation strategy to bring over 4M nurses into the innovation space. She enjoys pushing the limits and relentlessly questions paradigms, which is often on full display in her work as a top healthcare influencer. As an internationally recognized nurse futurist, she was a co-author on the seminal work, The Innovation Roadmap: A Nurse Leader’s Guide and was the lead author of the International Best-Selling book, The Nurse’s Guide to Innovation.  She publishes and blogs regularly on technologies impacting nursing.  Dr. Clipper is the sole nurse member of the HIMSS Innovation Board of Advisors and is a start-up coach for MATTER international health tech accelerator.  Her unique understanding of operations, strategy, workforce, and technology make her the perfect bridge-builder to create new workflows and processes to ensure that technology improves care and experiences for everyone.

From Alone on the Night Shift to Always Connected: How Telehealth Transforms Rural Care, with Sheila Freed of Avel eCare

Sheila Freed has been a nurse for over forty years, from big-city hospitals to tiny rural clinics where she sometimes worked the night shift completely alone. Today, as Clinical Operations Director for School Health and Senior Care at Avel eCare, she’s helping make sure no clinician has to face those moments without backup. In this episode, Sheila shares her journey through the evolution of digital health, how virtual care is changing life in rural communities, and why supporting the people who deliver care matters just as much as caring for patients themselves. When Sheila Freed started her nursing career, she went from a 700-bed Chicago hospital to a 20-bed facility in a South Dakota town of 800 people — where she was the only nurse on night shift. That experience shaped her understanding of what true rural care looks like: resource-strained, deeply personal, and often lonely. Years later, as telemedicine began to take hold, she saw firsthand how virtual connections could fill those gaps. She remembers a time when she had to intubate a friend’s mother alone on Christmas Day. Now, she watches rural clinicians perform the same procedure with an Avel eCare physician guiding them in real time — a change that still moves her to tears. Through Avel eCare’s school and senior-care programs, Sheila helps bring that same safety net to teachers, aides, and rural nurses who once felt isolated in their roles. A single button press now connects them instantly to a remote nurse who can assess symptoms, calm a crisis, or simply talk them through what just happened. But the power of telehealth isn’t just clinical. It’s emotional. Sheila’s team follows up after emergencies to check on staff, debrief, and connect them to behavioral-health support when needed — because, as she says, “the technology saves lives, but the support saves careers.” For many in rural America, that’s the difference between burning out and staying in the work they love.  Meet Sheila Freed Sheila Freed, BSN, RN, NCSN serves as the Clinical Operations Director for School Health and Senior Care at Avel eCare; which provides school nursing and behavior health services via live audio/visual technology to over 135 schools in 12 states.  She has been a building nurse, a School Health Supervisor and then the Director of Nurses/School Health Liaison for a public health unit. A strong advocate for children’s health she believes leveraging technology can solve access issues to rural as well as urban schools and provide every student with the opportunity to be healthy and safe at school, regardless of location. She is a 2015 Johnson and Johnson School Health Leadership Fellow and a Nationally Certified School Nurse. She received her BSN from the University of Wyoming.

Frontier Care, Modern Tools: Bringing Access Home Across Rural South Dakota, with Lacey Finkbeiner of Horizon Health

Lacey Finkbeiner, Clinical Informatics Specialist at Horizon Health, joins Joanna Braunold to share how her team is redefining access across South Dakota’s rural and tribal communities. From broadband breakthroughs to telehealth-enabled school clinics, Lacey explains how digital innovation and community partnerships are helping families get care closer to home. Across 28,000 square miles of South Dakota, Horizon Health is often the only provider for miles. Lacey Finkbeiner explains how her team uses telemedicine to close gaps for patients who might otherwise drive hours for care. Clinics like Horizon’s site in Bison rely on nurses and digital tools to connect patients with remote providers, allowing them to stay local while still receiving high-quality primary, behavioral, and dental care. Contrary to expectations, some of South Dakota’s tribal reservations have better fiber connectivity than nearby cities, thanks to targeted funding and partnerships with local telcos. Lacey shares how Horizon has leveraged those relationships and federal grants to strengthen broadband access, and how they support patients and staff through outreach, annual training, and simple digital literacy programs. Word-of-mouth has become their most effective tool for driving adoption and trust.  From tele-behavioral health to school-based clinics, Horizon’s hybrid approach keeps care close to home. School programs connect students to providers via telehealth for same-day testing and treatment, helping children stay in class while getting care. For Lacey, these programs are personal, rooted in her lifelong commitment to rural health and her belief that technology can sustain small communities by keeping people healthy, connected, and cared for where they live.  Meet Lacey Finkbeiner Lacey Finkbeiner is currently employed at Horizon Health Care as a Clinical Informatics Specialist.  Lacey has worked in the FQHC world for over 14 years, beginning her career at Prairie Community Health in Isabel, SD in 2009.  In 2016, Prairie Community Health and Horizon Health Care merged forces in which she has continued her employment path.  Lacey worked closely with Prairie Health IT Network’s training program from 2016-2018.  As the grant concluded Lacey became a full time member of Horizon’s Health Informatics’ team and currently at Horizon Lacey works closely with our electronic health record and telemedicine programs.  In 2019 Lacey worked with a team of providers to launch Horizon’s TytoCare program in 22 clinic locations.  This program is largely utilized to date to provide access to patients in these rural community settings to primary care and specialty providers. Lacey was born and raised in Isabel, SD.  After high school she completed college at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science and minor in Management Information Systems in 2007 and Master’s in Business Administration in 2009.  Lacey enjoys camping, travelling, volunteering in community activities, and spending time with her family.