LifeBridge Well being, based mostly in Owings Mills, Maryland, confronted two major telemedicine challenges: bettering operational effectivity and rising patient adoption.
THE CHALLENGE
Dr. Jonathan Thierman, president and chief government, ExpressCare and Youngsters’s Urgent Care, at LifeBridge Well being, beforehand had arrange the LifeBridge Well being Virtual Well being Center. From that have he knew an environment friendly telemedicine operation would scale back friction for sufferers, making it simpler for them to undertake the new course of.
Nonetheless, in the urgent care setting, he noticed that few sufferers have been utilizing telemedicine and that wait instances have been far too lengthy.
Past these major challenges, the well being system additionally encountered a number of technical obstacles. It explored a number of telehealth platforms, every providing a variety of options. Finally, it discovered the most essential capabilities have been people who tightly built-in the platform into patient registration and supplier workflows.
PROPOSAL
“We function a extremely environment friendly community of almost 35 urgent care facilities throughout Maryland,” Thierman stated. “One key to our effectivity is our ‘cut-and-paste’ strategy – making certain each element, from provides and facility format to workflow and staffing, is as constant as attainable throughout all places.
“This standardization permits us to establish inefficiencies as soon as and implement options systemwide,” he continued. “It additionally offers us flexibility in staffing, enabling suppliers and medical assistants to seamlessly transition between facilities with out disruption.”
By way of this strategy, employees recognized a big inefficiency: the occasional telemedicine go to inserted right into a supplier’s in-person workflow. These visits disrupted the normal course of, creating bottlenecks and making wait instances unpredictable for telemedicine sufferers.
Usually, virtual sufferers have been left ready of their “virtual room” whereas the supplier targeted on in-person care, unintentionally deprioritizing them just because they have been “out of sight, out of thoughts.”
“To deal with this, we created a standalone ‘telemedicine web site’ that features like an unbiased center inside our community,” Thierman defined. “This new center operates with its personal P&L, devoted employees and schedules. Registration, billing and different processes mirror these of our bodily facilities to take care of consistency.
“By consolidating telemedicine workflows right into a single, specialised center, we aimed to eradicate inefficiencies, enhance patient throughput, and, finally, enhance telemedicine adoption,” he added.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
For the telemedicine web site, LifeBridge Well being adopted the similar course of it had used to arrange new places in the previous. It employed new employees and suppliers and established enterprise operations, workflow patterns, and front- and back-end processes to match these of the bodily websites as intently as attainable.
“On our web site and scheduling platforms, we clearly designated ‘Telemedicine’ as a brand new location, making it straightforward for sufferers to pick a virtual go to as a substitute of an in-person appointment,” Thierman defined. “For simplicity and integration, we opted to make use of the primary built-in telemedicine platform inside our EHR, Experity.
“For a quick interval, we collaborated with the platform’s father or mother firm to experiment with further options and enhancements,” he continued.
“Nonetheless, we finally decided a streamlined strategy was greatest, minimizing potential issues. This allowed us to take care of an built-in telemedicine platform that leveraged the similar EHR performance sufferers and employees have been already conversant in for scheduling appointments.”
RESULTS
Virtually in a single day, telemedicine patient quantity doubled with the launch of the virtual center. Inside a couple of months, it had tripled. At the similar time, LifeBridge Well being considerably decreased wait instances and improved patient throughput, making a extremely environment friendly system with distinctive patient satisfaction, Thierman famous.
“Our new virtual urgent care center supplied extraordinarily brief wait instances and allowed suppliers to see almost twice as many sufferers as they might in the similar interval for in-person visits,” he stated.
“In consequence, after we measured patient satisfaction scores – one thing we routinely do for all our places – the telemedicine center’s scores have been off the charts. Since then, we’ve got continued to develop patient volumes whereas sustaining excessive throughput and patient satisfaction metrics.
“We acknowledged the way forward for urgent care would come with virtual encounters and telemedicine visits, whether or not we supplied the service or another person did,” he continued. “As a substitute of worrying about cannibalizing our personal enterprise, we targeted on delivering the greatest telemedicine expertise attainable.”
Whereas income per telemedicine go to was decrease than for in-person visits, the decreased overhead and infrastructure prices – mixed with the means to see extra sufferers per hour – resulted in robust margins for this enterprise line after transitioning to the virtual center mannequin.”
Observe Invoice’s HIT protection on LinkedIn: Invoice Siwicki
E-mail him: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.
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