The VA is among the large swaths of healthcare experts leaning on the patient portal to enable patient care access during the coronavirus outbreak.
The healthcare facilities affiliated with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are leaning on the patient portal in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus, enable patient access to care, and adhere to social distancing best practices.
At the Oklahoma City VA Health Care System (OKCVAHCS), experts are encouraging patients to foremost access care using one of the remote options hosted on the patient portal. This comes as the health system is working to adhere to social distancing protocol and limit the number of well patients coming into the healthcare facility and potentially being exposed to the novel coronavirus.
“The Oklahoma City VA Health Care System is committed to providing high-quality care while keeping Veterans safe from the coronavirus (COVID-19),” said Wade Vlosich, the director of the OKCVAHCS. “Due to COVID-19 precautionary measures and out of concern for our veterans, we are honoring current social isolation and distancing guidelines.”
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As COVID-19 began its spread across the United States, the medical community worked to identify key strategies to limit the number of well patients visiting hospitals and clinics, soon to be hot spots for disease spread. The industry was also focused on keeping healthy clinicians separated from sick patients when possible.
Health technology quickly filled this gap. Telehealth, for example, immediately presented an opportunity for adhering to social distancing while still promoting patient access to care.
The Oklahoma City VA is making a concerted effort to push patients to these technology-enabled options, which will also include digital prescription refill requests.
“Through VA’s virtual care tools, we are able to leverage available technology to make sure that our patients and staff are as safe as possible during this time,” Vlosich said. “To help us address our Veterans’ most-urgent needs first, we ask that Veterans use our online tools for routine or non-urgent questions.”
This news comes as a number of EHR vendors are retooling the patient portal to make it a workable tool for care access during the coronavirus.
Epic Systems, for example, has implemented a patient portal questionnaire that will screen patients for coronavirus symptoms. The patient portal also still hosts video or telephone visits, secure direct messages, and digital prescription refill requests, all of which will protect patients and providers from contracting the virus and ideally lessen patient volume in hospitals and health clinics.
Allscripts has also made changes that makes it easier for patients to access telehealth via the patient portal.
All of this comes as industry experts ponder how the coronavirus might change the role of health IT throughout the industry going forward. The patient portal and the technology functions on it, namely telehealth, are not exactly new, but they are getting a new name as the industry leans on them to help combat coronavirus spread.
In fact, until now the patient portal has received a fairly tepid response from the healthcare industry. The technology and its capabilities to enable patient data access were front and center in meaningful use requirements. Providers had to report that at least one unique patient had viewed, downloaded, or transmitted their health data, something that was going to happen over the patient portal.
But after that, the tool largely fell flat. Provider and hospital adoption wasx high, topping out at nearly 90 percent, according to a 2019 report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
However, healthcare organizations had a tough time getting their patients on board. That same ONC report found that only about a quarter of patients had registered for the patient portal.
As the healthcare industry continues to grapple with coronavirus care access, social distances, and a medical workforce that are high-risk for contracting the illness, these health technologies will likely pave the way forward. The next question is the role they might play after the challenge of COVID-19 someday dissipates.
Source: PatientEngagement HIT