The 2025 Telehealth Trailblazer award was presented to Kaitlin Hughes, BS, RMA, during the 13th Annual Telehealth Summit held last month in Charleston. The Telehealth Trailblazer Award recognizes an individual or organization that is leading the way utilizing telehealth to improve access to care.
Hughes is the director of Mobile and Telehealth Services at CareSouth Carolina, a private, non-profit community health center in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. She has worked to ensure that families in rural areas have the same access to high quality health care as families as anyone else. Under her leadership the school-based telehealth program has expanded from five schools to 37 schools. She is passionate about patient care and dedicated to improving health care outcomes for people in her communities. She has embraced telehealth as a way to improve access to care for patients seeking behavioral health care and medication assisted treatment.
“As a leader she is very innovative, she is very compassionate about the populations that she works with,” said Amy Cook, the director of Behavioral Health at CareSouth Carolina. “She’s very compassionate about her team. Her team and their success is her success and that’s what is important.”
Palmetto Care Connections is the host of the Annual Telehealth Summit of South Carolina. The Telehealth Summit brings together leaders and professionals interested in utilizing telehealth to increase access to health care.
