How telehealth is being used on the coronavirus crisis front lines

Even before the CDC recommended that healthcare entities consider alternatives to face-to-face appointments and made it easier to bill for telehealth visits, our hospital planned to explore the technology in 2020.

The pandemic forced us to fast track this implementation. And honestly, it has been one positive for this unwelcome time in history.

We needed a solution that enabled us to quickly instruct patients to use available options through their patient portal and we wanted to proactively contact patients about what to do should they become ill with symptoms such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath. 

As we explored telehealth technology, it was also important to us that it was easy to use for both our patients and our providers. In addition, because of the urgency of our need to roll this out quickly, we needed a solution that had a streamlined, short implementation period.

The telehealth technology offered by FollowMyHealth® solution provided exactly what we were looking for. This technology delivered a way for our providers to perform telehealth with our patients, enabling us to care for our patients remotely when it made sense to do so.

FollowMyHealth is the patient portal our patients have been using for years. So, this is just an extension of existing technology for our health system. Any patient who has been seen in our health system (hospital or physician practices) via Allscripts SunriseTM EHR has been given the opportunity to join the patient portal over the past five years. FMH is an extension of Allscripts Sunrise, and the patient data is integrated.

A non-profit health system, Grand Lake uses many Allscripts solutions, including Sunrise Acute Care, Sunrise Ambulatory Care and Sunrise Financial Manager, in addition to FollowMyHealth.

We’re pleased with what telehealth technology has enabled for our organization. The adoption we are seeing from our providers and patients has gone well. And, even after this pandemic, it’s a great service to offer patients who are not mobile or just prefer it.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to affect the United States, Ohio worked to be proactive and Grand Lake Health System immediately began looking for a good alternative to patients physically entering a healthcare facility for treatment.

For patients who did not need a hands-on physical exam, we wanted a way to continue to treat them while promoting physical distancing.

We turned on telehealth as an extension of our patient portal solution in March. Within two weeks, we conducted more than 200 video visits and had 100 more scheduled.

The uptake has been impressive in some ways we did not expect. We have been monitoring the number of video visits, the age group of patient participation, and increased patient portal access.

Initially, we thought we would see younger patients use the telehealth service most. Not true! We’re finding that our age 50-plus patients are the heaviest users.

In addition, we have a 4% increase in the number of patients accessing the patient portal. This is exciting because there are so many other benefits to patients accessing their information on the portal, even beyond the telehealth aspect.

The FollowMyHealth telehealth technology solution met our needs. Allscripts understood the immediate need that healthcare facilities had because of COVID-19. They created a shortened implementation for the telehealth solution. In addition, the solution was extremely easy to use for both patients and providers. It really was a win-win situation.

We rolled out this technology in our ambulatory physician practices in a matter of days. Rather than cancelling non-urgent visits, our providers were asking patients if they would be willing to participate in a video visit from home. We have multiple providers in multiple practices using this technology. Patients are pleased with this alternative and have been very receptive to this within a very short period of time.

Now we are in process of rolling this technology out to several of our hospital outpatient services, such as Pain Clinic and Physical Therapy.

It really is a great service to offer for those patients that are not mobile, or shouldn’t be mobile during a pandemic.

Find out here about all the virtual solutions Allscripts offers to help you combat the spread of COVID-19. 

Copyright © 2024 Becker's Healthcare. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy. Cookie Policy. Linking and Reprinting Policy.

 

Featured Whitepapers

Featured Webinars