Hospitals and health systems across the country were faced with a barrage of obstacles that they had to overcome in a short time to manage the stresses of the pandemic. COVID-19 has changed how one perceives or accesses healthcare. Healthcare, which was once considered to be a luxury and in some cases it still is has become more available than before.
Healthcare can now be accessed using a smartphone and a solid internet connection. While healthcare access has become easier for patients, it has become something foriegn for physicians at least for a short period of time. Hospitals and healthcare systems had to scramble during the initial days of COVID-19 to ensure that they are able to provide their patients with continuous and quality healthcare. While some of the larger hospital systems had already started implementing telehealth in small cases, they were now forced to broaden those virtual services and ensure that it is provided for any patient in need.
Hospitals had to make sure that the telemedicine service they provide to their patients is:
The hospital should also ensure that the following things are accounted for when providing a telemedicine service:
Somehow a hospitals and health systems had to account for all of these things and implement telemedicine services in the span of few weeks, because COVID-19 was putting an unprecedented strain on them, conventional healthcare would have caused more harm than good, they were losing millions in revenue and most importantly patients and physicians were risking their lives to get healthcare.
Somehow all of these challenges were overcome by the Hackley Community Care Center, based in Muskegon, Michigan. Even though their operations were thrown into chaos and everything around them seemed to be going haywire, they managed to bounce back. They managed to provide effective telehealth for their patients.
An Account of Hackley Community Care Center Managed To Provide Effective Telehealth
In a public statement released by Megan Byrne, Assistant Operations Manager, Hackley Community Care Center, to Becker’s Hospital Review and corroborated by AllScripts’s Facebook page & their blog post, here’s how Hackley Community Care Center managed to provide quality telehealth service to their patients.
The statement is as follows, verbatim:
Like many healthcare organizations, Hackley faced a time of unprecedented challenges – and new opportunities – in March of 2020. We had to handle the COVID-19 pandemic while safely maintaining our usual patient flow of around 300-350 daily visits, using the technology tools we already had in place. We needed to deliver care remotely, both to protect patients during a critical time and maintain our usual day-to-day functions.
In the beginning of March, as COVID-19 became an urgent issue, we were able to launch our virtual patient visits in just five days. This was possible because providers and patients were familiar with the solutions needed; they already had the technology on their devices, and by now knew it well enough to adopt it quickly.
Hackley Community Care has 14 locations comprising 240 employees, including 50 medical providers, behavioral health providers, and other caregivers. Our mission is to support and promote the physical and mental health of our patients, supporting their pathway to wellness through quality care and education. We’ve also been clients and partners of Allscripts for 14 years, using the vendor’s solutions to help deliver quality care safely and efficiently. With the recent onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this became even more crucial.
While Hackley already had the telehealth portal offered by Allscripts’s FollowMyHealth®, our staff didn’t use it as commonly as other solutions on the same platform. Since we had been using FollowMyHealth for five years prior, however, their prior training and familiarity on those other solutions kickstarted their ability to adopt telehealth quickly, and patients who already knew and liked the platform were happy to adopt the portal as well.
Another solution, Allscripts Professional EHR Mobile, was key in setting up our telehealth system. Pro Mobile enabled all our physicians to speak directly to patients over the phone, while remotely accessing that patient’s chart and key information in the EHR. This kept the process simple and streamlined, helping to prevent burnout during a hectic time. Starting a virtual visit with a patient, and gathering the information needed to conduct it, took literally two clicks. Patients, meanwhile, already used the portal as their mechanism for getting records and requesting prescriptions and visits.
Everyone adopted this change so quickly in part because the training during initial rollout had been so thorough. By March 30, we were performing medical virtual visits and rolling out a COVID-19 RN triage team. Our staff helped to set up dozens of further FollowMyHealth patient portal accounts a week, and providers and patients were very happy with our approach.
Since then, we have not only seen a patient portal upturn, but higher satisfaction for our providers and staff who are seeing patients virtually and continuing to deliver the care they need. Our telehealth program is built on solutions we had in the past, but this is the future for us.
This account of how a community medical center managed to provide effective telehealth services is truly inspiring. We at BillingParadise, also ensure that our clients have the best telemedicine platform and have access to 24/7 end-to-end IT, billing, coding & RCM support for their chosen telemedicine platform. This way we are able to ensure that our client can focus on treating their patients without any hindrances.
