With the odds stacked against rural Americans, one community hospital is working to improve early detection of cardiac issues with an AI tool.
Heart disease is a silent killer, resulting in heart attacks, stroke and other deadly conditions without early detection. However, its adverse impact is more keenly felt in rural America. Research shows that cardiovascular death rates are 1.5 times higher in rural than in urban areas.
To address the high prevalence of heart disease within its patient population, Wayne General Hospital in Waynesboro, Mississippi, recently partnered with Eko Health to deploy its AI-based cardiac detection tool across its emergency and primary care departments.
The hospital is the largest medical center within a 30-mile radius and serves a diverse population with numerous medical needs, including diabetes, hypertension and cardiac issues, he said. In fact, it is not uncommon for the hospital to treat patients in their mid-20s and 30s with heart failure.
"Because of the significant comorbidities, and then just the lack of healthcare resources in our area, we face quite a bit of healthcare challenges in caring for these patients," Jason Rogers, Wayne General's vice president of clinical operations and environment of care, said.
To enhance care for this population amid these challenges, hospital leaders explored AI-based solutions to improve early detection, ultimately selecting Eko's SENSORA platform.
How AI can help target cardiac issues
Launched at Wayne General Hospital in December 2025, the platform is a reimagined stethoscope that captures two types of data: heart sounds recorded acoustically and electrical heart signals via electrocardiogram (ECG).
"In as little as 15 seconds of recording, the platform's AI algorithms analyze that combined data to flag potential signs of structural heart murmurs, low ejection fraction or a weakened heart pump, and atrial fibrillation -- conditions that frequently go undetected in primary care," said Jason Bellet, co-founder and chief business officer at Eko Health.
The company's latest Eko Foundation Analysis Software with Transformers (EFAST) foundation model, trained on more than 4 million de-identified heart sounds and ECG recordings, received FDA clearance in September 2025.
At Wayne General, the tool is used for any patient showing signs of heart disease.
"If your patient meets the criteria, such as shortness of breath, chest pain, leg swelling, syncope, those types of clinical indicators, they're eligible for the AI portion," Rogers explained.
The tool, which functions like a stethoscope, then analyzes heart sounds and signals and feeds the data into an accompanying app that clinicians can access. Rogers noted that the tool provides a detailed analysis. For instance, it not only indicates that a patient has a structural heart disease, such as a murmur, but also what type of murmur.
AI delivers clinical, financial benefits
As with any technology introduction, Wayne General's clinicians were intrigued by the AI platform. However, they also had several questions, including how the tool would impact clinician workflow and whether it would be cumbersome to use, Rogers shared.
Notably, hospital leaders did not force the tool on staff but rather allowed them to use it if they found it beneficial, he said. They also created templates within the EHR to ease the tool's introduction into daily workflows.
According to Rogers, as adoption grew, the tool's impact on patient care became apparent.
"We have detected quite a bit of relevant heart disease that the patients had no idea of," he said.
Clinicians can identify potential heart disease cases during a traditional medical exam, but Rogers said the tool allows them to identify heart issues faster, showing in real time whether someone has a heart condition versus another pathology that's affecting the patient's vital signs or symptoms.
The downstream impact of early disease detection is significant. If a heart issue is diagnosed early, physicians in the ED and primary care settings can more quickly set the next steps in motion, whether that is alerting the hospital medicine team, ordering additional diagnostics or providing outpatient cardiology referrals, Rogers said.
In rural areas, where people have a 19% higher risk of developing heart failure compared to their urban counterparts, having this kind of rapid early detection of heart disease can result in a material improvement to patient outcomes.
"It all comes down to clinical care," Rogers said. "Anytime we can find opportunities to provide better clinical care and improve outcomes of our patients, that's what we strive to do at our hospital."
But the tool's impact is not just clinical. Rogers highlighted the expected financial benefits of the tool as well.
CMS included a national payment rate of $128.90 for the SENSORA platform in the final 2025 Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule.
According to Rogers, the platform is currently being used in the hospital's ED between three and nine times in a 12-hour shift, which means the payment rate could yield more than $100,000 a year through the platform's use in the ED alone.
"And with the challenges that rural facilities face in regards to finances and some of the recent cuts that have been made nationwide due to the different funding sources, we try to identify any way possible that we can generate revenue as well," he said.
The funding cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are expected to slash Medicaid spending in rural areas by $137 billion over the next decade, leaving rural hospitals in dire financial straits.
Scaling beyond the ED, primary care
Given the platform's clinical and financial benefits, Wayne General Hospital leaders are looking to expand its use.
However, before hospital leaders can decide where and how to deploy the platform, they will assess the pilot results. Rogers shared that they will examine how often the platform is being used, as well as to what extent it reduces the time between early disease detection and subsequent referrals.
If the platform continues to perform well against the outlined parameters, it will be deployed across the hospital's outpatient clinics within the next six to nine months. Additionally, the hospital is considering implementing the platform for school sports physicals.
"Sudden cardiac death is not very common, but it does occur in the youth and pediatric population," Rogers said. "And oftentimes that is [due to] structural heart disease. So, how many times are these disease processes being missed on just a normal physical exam that could have maybe been otherwise detected through SENSORA's AI technology?"
As AI use in healthcare ramps up, the technology's benefits become increasingly apparent. For rural hospitals, especially, these benefits could significantly boost patient care and financial outcomes, provided they find tools that are the right fit for their organization's needs.
Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.
