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The power of telehealth to save lives was on full display the night Garrett Graham looked over at his wife to find she just had a stroke.

The frightening moments that followed took Garrett and Brenda Graham from Shelbyville High School, where they were watching a volleyball game, to HSHS Good Shepherd Hospital in Shelbyville and, ultimately, HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield.

A telehealth call between a physician at HSHS Good Shepherd and a neurosurgeon at HSHS St. John’s saved precious minutes. Brenda Garrett, then paralyzed on the left side of her body, was airlifted to HSHS St. John’s for treatment.

Telehealth is crucial in many hospitals, including those in rural Illinois, where some facilities do not have specialists on staff. Garrett Graham, in a video interview, pointed to telehealth as saving his wife’s life.

“The whole thing had to come about in a four-hour window max and they had it accomplished in about two hours,” he said. “From our perspective the good Lord put us here [HSHS Good Shepherd] because this is where we had to be.”

The Coalition to Protect Telehealth strongly supports House Bill 3498 to protect access to telehealth. Learn more at https://protectillinoistelehealth.org/.