Over the course of the last 16 months, healthcare has gone through a massive digital revolution; as the pandemic pushed on, more and more healthcare providers were forced to switch from primarily in-person visits to increasing numbers of telehealth visits via video chat. At the onset of the pandemic, in April 2020, telehealth services increased by more than 4000 percent.
Nemours Children’s Health System was one of the organizations that looked to make care simple and accessible to its patients through and post pandemic. Nemours provides care for children 18 and under across five states and has more than 1.8 million patient encounters in their EMR each year, and has HIMSS Stage 7 accreditation.
Pediatric medicine poses its own set of challenges. Most patients at Nemours receiving care for complex medical issues, which cannot be stalled even during a pandemic, so they needed a way to provide a high standard of care to its patients beyond its hospital doors.
The Concept:
Provide its patients with a platform to conduct in home visits, obtain medical information, and communicate with clinical staff.
The Solution:
Care Connect, a telehealth platform that is family focused with a patient portal, access to their child’s medical records, in app appointment scheduling, communication actions, and questionnaires. Patient families can use the platform though the already established Nemours app.
The app was rolled out during the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and has proved to be extremely valuable to the network and its patients. For example, doctors can see how a child is responding to a treatment or follow up after a surgery via video visit. Let’s say the doctor notices the child is running a fever and showing signs of infection, they can then bring them in for an in-person appointment. On the reverse, the child is doing great post-op and is showing no signs of infection, the doctor can continue to follow up with the family via Care Connect, which limits the child’s exposure to outside illness while not limiting the quality of care.
Gina Altieri, who is the executive vice president, enterprise chief communications officer for Nemours Children's Health System, explained, “For routine things, it does provide a mechanism for care and solutions, It also provides information on when a patient needs to come in."
The platform also allows families to relay or enter in information into the portal in between visits making it easier than ever to communicate with their child’s doctors.
Altieri was instrumental in building the Nemours' EMR platform into what it is today and worked to achieve HIMSS Stage 7 designation. Altieri explained that, “health systems wanting to take the same journey can leverage existing technology to improve care and cost efficiency.” That did not come without its own set of challenges, adding, “that building the infrastructure was complicated and expensive. It began with having a lot of health content.”
If you are interested in learning more about Nemours, they will be presenting at the HealthyData Virtual Academy on July 28th. The event offers 2.5 AHIMA CEU credits and is complementary to all attendees. Alex Koster, who is the Director of Analytics and Technology at Nemours, will be giving the presentation on how operational innovation, targeted analytics, and creativity helped Nemours during COVID-19.
To register and preview the event agenda please visit here.
Sources:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2772537
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/nemours-manages-care-home-through-single-digital-platform
About the Author: Taylor Genter
Taylor is the Marketing Specialist at Extract with experience in data analytics, graphic design, and both digital and social media marketing. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing at the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater. Taylor enjoys analyzing people’s behaviors and attitudes to find out what motivates them, and then curating better ways to communicate with them.