With budget crunches and growing political uncertainty, Planned Parenthood is focusing on improving telehealth appointments to maintain and expand coverage in Alaska.
The new Virtual Health Center is an overhaul of Planned Parenthood’s online services, allowing people to meet with providers for birth control, abortion consultations and gender-affirming care, as well as provide referrals for in-person services such as STI testing and wellness exams with local providers and clinics.
The move comes months after the reproductive health care provider’s Juneau health center closed permanently after facing escalating costs, leaving the state with clinics only in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
Rebecca Gibron, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, said in an interview this week that the move to invest in telehealth was driven by the same challenges facing much of the health care industry.
“When you look at the national trends and the national challenges of recruitment and retention of providers, Planned Parenthood is not immune to that,” she said. “What I’m trying to do is ensure the most access to care through balancing in-clinic, bricks-and-mortar and telehealth access for patients.”
She said the service is currently set up so people can schedule online appointments with providers — located in either Alaska or Washington and licensed in Alaska — every Tuesday and that it will be scaled up if the demand is there. Most common services, such as appointments to get birth control, emergency contraception and gender-affirming care, as well as get consultations and referrals for in-person services such as STI testing, PAP exams or abortion.
Telehealth isn’t entirely new to Planned Parenthood — Gibron recalled how the very first patient they saw when they launched an earlier version of telehealth consultations 10 years ago was in Bethel — but the new Virtual Health Center is the next big step. She said she hopes it’s particularly useful for addressing the many geographic gaps in care that existed well before Juneau’s clinic was closed.
“The thing that’s so great about telehealth in a state like Alaska that has this kind of amazing and difficult geography, is it’s not always easy for a patient to access an in-clinic health care visit,” she said. “We made a real commitment when we had to close the Juneau center, which I know was really a struggle. I know that it was really anxiety-producing for folks about us leaving a brick-and-mortar space, but when we did that, we made a commitment that we were going to continue to invest in telehealth infrastructure to ensure Alaskans can get the care that they need.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
