When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and everything shut down, healthcare organizations were forced to adopt telemedicine to provide care. But a lot of organizations don’t have telemedicine, and therefore don’t have the technology.
So many supplier organizations scrambled and turned to what they could. And in a lot of cases, this is Zoom – a video conferencing technology that almost everyone is familiar with today. It is easy to use, requires very little infrastructure or education, and is popular. And it did it.
MaineGeneral Health, a health system based in Augusta, Maine, adopted telemedicine technology early in the pandemic, but was impressed with what others were doing with Zoom and quickly switched to the technology. video.
Healthcare IT News interviewed Laura Mrazik, telemedicine manager at MaineGeneral Health, to discuss uses and best practices with Zoom so others can learn from MaineGeneral’s lessons.
Q. You have achieved great success in telemedicine using Zoom technology. Please talk about what first brought you to Zoom and why you decided to stick with Zoom.
ONE. We have been closely monitoring Zoom since the time of the pandemic, although we have contracted with another company for synchronous telehealth services. In early 2021, Zoom did an excellent job highlighting the security measures it took to ensure HIPAA compliance for health system customers.
We decided to test Zoom on a small use case (employee to employee) that didn’t fit the range of capabilities of our current platform. We quickly saw value in Zoom’s inherent versatility and familiarity with many users, both staff and patients.
Our initial experiment has quickly grown into four active telehealth services. We then presented the business case for piloting the migration of existing services to Zoom, including all primary care approaches.
Since then, we’ve moved all of our synchronized “virtual visit” telemedicine services to Zoom. Volumes have continued to grow since we switched all services. It’s been a year since primary care switched to Zoom.
Year by year, we tripled monthly traffic in 2022. 35 monthly averages in 2021 to 150 monthly in 2022 – 216 in December. We were able to streamline the process present your interpreter services by integrating with our existing interpreter platform.
We can now bring an interpreter directly into the virtual session with just a few clicks. For our next project to improve the experience for existing services, we are integrating the patient scheduling/booking and reminder system with Zoom to create a more streamlined workflow for the patient. staff to schedule a visit.
We’re also improving the brand experience – it’s great that Zoom allows MaineGeneral to hold the key to brand tuning.
Other important factors for sticking with Zoom include: We appreciate Zoom’s ability for customer organizations to control internal, account-level settings and application flexibility to meet the needs of different use cases. Zoom’s support portal has both a forum to ask questions of other customers and a library of instructions on how our team can appropriately troubleshoot or change configurations.
Patients are not required to create and remember a username and password to join their virtual visit, and many are used to Zoom in communicating remotely with friends or family. We’re excited to explore Zoom’s API capabilities and our ability to build internal integrations.
Q. Please describe how you used Zoom with a specific clinical use case and some of the successes you’ve had here.
ONE. Behavioral Health has been a pioneer since the beginning of MaineGeneral’s telehealth rollout, leading the organization in the number of telehealth. Overall, behavioral health departments typically have higher rates of in-person absences and 24-hour cancellations.
Virtual visits save many of those visits, especially for patients with transportation or childcare challenges. These visits also often fit into a virtual visit, as they do not require a physical exam.
MaineGeneral’s pediatric behavioral health specialty practice, Edmund Ervin Pediatric Center (EEPC), has grown from an average of 28 visits per month in calendar year 2021 to 121 visits per month in 2022, with an average of 165 visits in November and December.
In calendar year 2022, virtual visits accounted for more than 12% of all pediatric center visits. Most recently, the EEPC team added their physical, occupational, and speech therapist clinicians to the virtual team, where they not only avoid late cancellations, but can also serve their patients. better.
Here are two examples of patient visits with unforeseen outcomes resulting from virtual visits, while the child remained at home in their own environment:
- A young patient is suspected of having autism. During the first Zoom visit from home, the child was active and interactive and the clinician was able to gather enough information to rule out Autism Spectrum Disorder.
- During a virtual visit, a young child in feeding therapy ate more in their own home for the clinician to observe than when they ate in a practice setting in feeding therapy.
The ability to see patients in an environment where they can feel most comfortable and relaxed has been shown to be a major benefit to home behavioral health services.
Q. Please describe how you used Zoom with another specific clinical use case and some of the success you’ve had there.
ONE. We recently moved our direct-to-consumer telemedicine platform to Zoom. In December, our Urgent Care operations switched to Zoom for MaineGeneral’s virtual urgent care service, “eCare.”
During the first full month of switching platforms, the number of services increased, quadrupling the average number of visits (average 14 visits per month, up to 62 visits in January). We predict the volume will continue to increase in 2023.
We’ve spent almost three years using a model that requires MaineGeneral to only accept credit/debit cards, charging a flat fee for services. After converting to Zoom, the organization was able to start paying for the service and bring it back to the medical center.
Patients and staff using the app have found Zoom to be a very user-friendly solution.
Initially, we built a mobile app, where patients mostly come to us for the first time, download the mobile app or visit our website from their mobile device. their computer/laptop. With Zoom, we changed that model – we now have a scheduler on our phones that registers patient appointments.
Currently, patients are prompted to press a number in an existing phone tree to schedule a virtual visit. This is a great way to provide services to patients who don’t care about telehealth, but are still interested in being offered this option. As we continue to raise awareness of the service, we are excited about the opportunities this platform offers.
Q. What are your plans for Zoom and telehealth this year and beyond?
ONE. We plan to continue to expand telehealth services for our specialty practices across the health system, with surgical specialties to come. We’ve also embarked on projects to create process efficiency through integrations and improve experience consistency with enhanced branding and communications.
We will also be testing a newer use case this calendar year, with the emergency department and Delta Ambulance Emergency Medical Services (EMS). This pilot project will virtually connect the EMS with our ED physicians during patient transport to our ED (and between facilities), to improve the quality of decision making. during transport of stroke and pediatric epilepsy patients, for example.
Beyond this year, we will continue to explore different telehealth use cases to meet community needs and improve patient experience as we go digital. We will also explore ways to improve efficiency on the employee side, with EHR integration, etc.
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Email the writer: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
