Virtual care is working at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.
In 2018, the number of virtual visits, or telehealth sessions, grew to 6,668 from 4,700 in 2017, while the number of patients monitored at home rose year over year to 2,407 to 2066.
As a result, the number of miles patients avoided driving to doctor appointments was about 70,000, Henry Ford virtual program coordinator Taylor Collins told attendees Friday at World Congress 2019 Care Coordination & Technology Conference in Atlanta.
But Henry Ford, which operates five hospitals and 27 medical centers, learned some valuable lessons over time in growing virtual care
Among them:
- Take an enterprise approach to focus virtual care project management
- Standardize processes
- Develop patient awareness and adoption
- Obtain executive and physician buy-in
- Collaborate with multiple systemwide support teams
- Develop clinical department stakeholder ownership
- Implement a new standard of care delivery
- Develop a virtual care project implementation work plan
- Prepare virtual care request forms and an intake process
- Have turn-key virtual care equipment kit
- Develop a scheduling and billing components
- Prepare training and support documents and services
“Successful organizations embrace change and change is always occurring in the virtual care space,” Collins told attendees.
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