Minnesota selects Cue Health to run its COVID telehealth service

The new program will allow Minnesotans who test positive for COVID to have a virtual consult

While we'd all obviously like to put COVID behind us, but it was never going to be that simple: new variants were always going to come around and, inevitably, cases, hospitalizations, and maybe even deaths, would begin to rise again. Which is exactly what's happening now. Add to that the low percentage of people who have gotten the latest booster shot, and we might be in for a grim winter season.

Minnesota, in particular, saw a rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations after Thanksgiving, which is why the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) announced a partnership with Cue Health on Thursday to provide a statewide COVID-19 telehealth to treatment program.

Cue Health is a healthcare technology company that manufactures medical diagnostic products for use in home and clinical settings; the new program will be powered by Cue Care, the company's virtual consultation service, and will be available at no cost to residents of Minnesota, no matter if they have insurance or not.  

Through this partnership, if a Minnesotan tests positive on a self-administered COVID-19 test, they will be able to consult with a healthcare professional virtually and on-demand. That will include a prescription for COVID-19 treatment at no cost if it's determined to be necessary, which the patient will be able to pick-up the same day pick-up, or have delivered from their local pharmacy.

Patients can access the telehealth-to-treatment service through the Cue Health App.

Cue has been working the State of Minnesota since 2020 when it began delivering Cue Health Monitoring Systems and Cue COVID-19 molecular tests as part of the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services’ pandemic response programs.

Founded in 2010, Cue's solution includes it Health Monitoring System, a portable device that can perform a molecular test and connect patients to a mobile health platform, as well as the Cue Dashboard, a web-based application for businesses and organizations to manage their Cue testing program.

The Cue Dashboard includes a scheduler for testing events within the organization, the ability to manage multiple test locations from one centralized portal, a Test Center to view and manage test results in real time, amd the capability to view and manage categories of members.

In 2020, the company was awarded a $13 million contract to accelerate the development, validation and FDA clearance of a portable, molecular diagnostic test capable of detecting COVID-19 in less than 25 minutes using a simple nasal swab.  

“Cue’s diagnostic platform has been deployed over the past two years across the United States, including in Minnesota, and we are proud to expand our partnership with the State to now provide Minnesotans access to our telehealth to treatment services for COVID-19,” Chris Achar, Chief Strategy Officer for Cue Health, said in a statement.

“Our solution builds on Cue’s history of successful public sector work and can be utilized in the future to address other important public health issues, such as influenza and sexually transmitted infections.”

(Image source: care.cuehealth.com)