Telehealth is no longer a side project in U.S. healthcare—it’s rapidly evolving into a permanent, high-stakes battleground for access, efficiency, and patient trust. COVID-19 forced open the doors, but the question now is: how do leading health systems build on this momentum to transform care? In this exclusive interview for The American Journal of Healthcare Strategy, Amy Wright, MS, RN—Director of Clinical Operations for Urgent Care, Telehealth & Access at Jefferson Health—shares how her frontline leadership is shaping the next phase of virtual care delivery.
Drawing from her unique journey from 911 EMT to nurse leader and now telehealth executive, Amy offers candid reflections on patient experience, staff culture, and what healthcare must get right for telehealth to truly deliver. If you care about quality, access, or the future of U.S. healthcare operations, this is a conversation worth your time.
Amy Wright became a healthcare administrator to impact more patients and improve care system-wide. As she put it:
“In my own little patient assignment in the emergency department, I knew I could provide great care for the patients and the families... but there was an entire emergency department of patients that needed to have that same care provided. For me, stepping into a leadership role was a way that I could start coaching and mentoring and have some influence over other teams.”
This transition is common among nurse leaders, but Amy’s motivation was not about moving away from patient care—it was about scaling it. She recognized that system-level decisions about staffing, flow, and access ultimately shape the consistency and quality of patient experiences.
Key takeaways for healthcare leaders:
Leadership enables clinicians to scale their impact far beyond the bedside.
Consistency in care is best achieved when administrative and clinical priorities are aligned.
Coaching, mentoring, and supporting frontline staff are core administrative functions—not afterthoughts.
Amy Wright’s background in emergency medicine taught her to deliver calm, empathetic care—skills that directly inform her approach to telehealth.
She explained, “I liked the idea of being able to be with patients very quickly, stabilizing them, figuring out what the issue was... and then getting them to the definitive care they needed.”
Amy’s prehospital experience as a 911 EMT, followed by her emergency department roles, shaped her focus on:
Rapid triage and stabilization
Clear, calm communication during high-stress moments
Transitioning patients smoothly to the next level of care, whether at home or in the hospital
Her move from ambulances to the emergency room, and eventually to leadership, reflects a broader trend: emergency clinicians are well-suited to drive innovation in telehealth, where decisive action and empathy are equally vital.
Implications for telehealth programs:
Recruit leaders who understand the full patient journey—from home to hospital and back.
Embed emergency medicine’s adaptability and communication style in telehealth protocols.
Prioritize cross-training: those who’ve worked both “outdoors” (prehospital) and “indoors” (clinical) bring unique system-wide insight.
Patient experience isn’t “fluff”—it’s foundational, and begins with meeting basic human needs. Amy draws on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to ground her approach:
“When they come through the door, they are a human, they have basic needs—they want to be warm, they want to feel safe, they want to be given food and shelter and taken care of... That’s going to increase their anxiety. So it’s our job to make sure that we’re addressing those basic needs.”
Amy shared how her stint as an ED Patient Experience Coordinator deepened her respect for this principle. In her words, “I really got to see how much of the control piece and those basic needs were driving the frustrations that patients were feeling. It was driving the conflict and the complaints that we were seeing.”
Practical steps for leaders:
Acknowledge that every patient encounter is unique and potentially life-altering for the individual, regardless of clinical severity.
Train staff to overcommunicate: Patients want to understand “the why” and “what’s next.”
Reduce anxiety by giving patients as much control and comfort as possible in unfamiliar settings.
What to avoid:
Don’t assume patient complaints are about clinical care alone; unmet basic needs often underlie dissatisfaction.
Empathy and communication top the list, and these are skills honed over time—not just learned in school.
Amy told us, “Every interaction that you have with a patient, regardless of whether you’re a student or a licensed clinician, you have the opportunity to learn something... Reminding ourselves that it’s the first time in some cases that those patients are hearing it and it’s the words they need to hear in order to be calm and to trust you.”
Her perspective reframes provider training:
Empathy isn’t “nice-to-have”—it’s a core competency for patient safety and compliance.
Communication must be proactive and repetitive, even if it feels excessive to staff.
Providers must approach every patient as a new experience and avoid letting frustration from prior encounters influence care.
Checklist for frontline leaders:
Model calm, patient, and empathetic interactions during all team meetings and huddles.
Encourage self-reflection and peer feedback on communication styles.
Normalize overcommunicating with patients—clarity reduces anxiety and complaints.
Amy Wright was a self-described “giant skeptic” of telehealth, especially at the start of COVID-19.
She openly shared, “Some of the thoughts were, you know, are the doctors just afraid of the COVID virus? So they’re afraid to go into the rooms and they’re avoiding those types of patients... That it was a shortcut, that again, the care wasn’t the same.”
Her skepticism was rooted in the perception that virtual care was:
A workaround for provider safety concerns, not a true substitute for in-person care
Rushed into practice without sufficient culture change or staff education
At risk of eroding the quality of physical assessment
How did she change her mind?
First-hand experience: “Jumping into it and seeing how my clinical brain and my skepticism can help maybe turn the tides of the feelings towards telehealth.”
Observing highly skilled clinicians conduct comprehensive assessments virtually, with or without physical touch, supported by trained staff at the patient’s location
Realizing telehealth is not “lesser care”—it’s the same standards, delivered differently
Lesson for executive leaders:
Expect skepticism among your clinical teams. Address it head-on with education, exposure, and peer champions—skeptics often become your best telehealth advocates.
Telehealth isn’t going away—it’s becoming a pillar of modern healthcare, especially for patients with mobility challenges or those far from major centers.
Amy is optimistic: “The future is so bright. The fact that we have the ability to take care and provide it in patients’ homes, I think, is one of the biggest game changers.”
She outlined where the sector is headed:
Home-based care will become standard for many conditions, with hospital stays reserved for high-acuity patients.
Telehealth will be used for:
Streamlining care transitions
Involving family members remotely in clinical conversations
Consulting with subspecialists in real time (e.g., neurologists for stroke care)
Improved outcomes, higher quality, and better patient safety will result from “improving access to outstanding care that our patients are getting.”
For U.S. health systems, the call to action is clear:
Invest in telehealth infrastructure and workflows.
Create partnerships that extend care beyond traditional hospital walls.
Train clinicians to excel at “webside” manner, not just bedside care.
Amy Wright believes AI will streamline workflows, but human touch remains irreplaceable.
She stated, “There is such a human factor in healthcare... that’s never going to be replaced by AI. But I think what AI will be able to do for us in the future is make things more efficient.”
AI’s best applications, according to Amy:
Automating administrative tasks that sap clinician time and attention
Surfacing data to inform real-time decision-making
Enabling providers to spend more time face-to-face with patients
For executive teams:
Invest in AI that enhances—not replaces—human care.
Pilot new technology with an eye toward efficiency and provider satisfaction.
Expect that adoption will depend on clear communication and support for frontline staff.
Patients’ expectations have shifted post-COVID, and not always for the better. Compassion is needed on both sides of the interaction.
Amy observed, “People are—patients even—less compassionate towards the teams that are doing the work and are a little bit more short with them, get frustrated more easily... that just creates this wall that goes up with our healthcare providers and we don’t want to be defensive with our patients.”
Her advice for providers:
Don’t let previous negative encounters shape how you treat the next patient.
Remember, every patient is an opportunity to impact not just an individual, but their community.
“One person impacts way more and we have the opportunity to make it a better experience for them.”
Patient-centered reminders:
Healthcare professionals are navigating immense change—patience and empathy go both ways.
Every interaction is a chance to rebuild trust and foster better care.
Amy Wright’s journey—from EMT to nurse, to director of telehealth at Jefferson Health—underscores the need for humility, adaptability, and open communication.
To drive successful telehealth transformation:
Cultivate leaders with clinical experience and administrative vision.
Treat patient experience as a core operational metric.
Tackle skepticism by empowering clinical skeptics as telehealth champions.
Invest in technology that enables, not replaces, human care.
The next wave of telehealth will not just be about video visits, but about integrating virtual, in-person, and home-based care into a seamless experience for patients and families.
Telehealth’s future will be built by those who combine bedside compassion, operational rigor, and a willingness to challenge assumptions. As Amy Wright, MS, RN, put it, “We have the opportunity to make it a better experience for them.” Whether you lead a health system, run clinical operations, or are a student preparing for a healthcare career, the call to action is the same: double down on empathy, communication, and continuous learning as we navigate this next era of healthcare transformation.
