The increased use of telehealth was implemented to reduce the need for patients to come into medical facilities, where they could potentially be exposed to the coronavirus. Like other health systems, Kaiser Permanente saw the use of telehealth versus in-person visits flip compared to prepandemic days the organization averaged 85% in-person office visits and 15% telehealth appointments prior to the COVID-19 outbreak versus an average of 20% office visits and 80% telehealth appointments today. We’ve had the infrastructure available to provide this service and significantly built on that since the COVID crisis hit.” “But we’re using telehealth now more than ever. “Our physicians, staff, and patients were aware of these care options,” Dr. Kaiser Permanente’s advantage compared to other health systems is that virtual visits - such as phone and video appointments - have been available to patients for several years. “While no one knows when a global pandemic will occur, we were as prepared as possible to continue to care for patients while responding to those stricken with COVID-19,” says Edward Lee, MD, executive vice president and chief information officer of The Permanente Federation. In an effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, health care organizations across the country had to quickly pivot to telehealth so they could provide care to patients remotely.īut at Kaiser Permanente and the Permanente Medical Groups - the physician groups that provide care to more than 12.4 million members - it wasn’t so much of a pivot as a widening of existing services. March 7 in the Venetian, Palazzo E.More Kaiser Permanente members get comfortable with virtual visits during COVID-19 pandemic There’s a whole other way of communicating and this is it.”Īri Melmed will be speaking in the session, “Chat with a Doctor: On-Demand, Asynchronous Physician Advice,” at 4 p.m. There’s a rampant conflation of telehealth with video visits and the two should not be thought of as synonymous. “Everyone is focused on video, video, video. “I think chat is really under the radar,” he said. But for some reason people expect healthcare to be different. Even outside of healthcare, consumers text one another more easily and more frequently than they use services like Skype. Our satisfaction is through the roof.”Īs for chat, Melmed said that it’s the natural way people communicate in 2017. It’s just unprecedented in most people’s healthcare experience. They’re just not used to having instant access to a physician. “We’ve found that this is very surprising and highly satisfying to the members. “One of the unusual things about this program is we put the physician up front rather than having the members go through a screening process of some sort,” Melmed said. He attributes the traction to two things: direct connection to doctors and the ease of the chat format. Melmed said the program now sees 100 to 200 visitors a day. “Someone thinks they’ve got flu or UTI or sinus infection we can help them determine whether or not they in fact do, and if they need antibiotics or an inhaler or a prescription for something we can enter that into their Kaiser medical record and get that sorted out.” “What we’ve found is somewhere around two-thirds of the issues, we can resolve right there on chat,” Melmed said. If the condition is more complicated, they connect the patient to a staffer who will schedule an appointment. The doctor can assess simple things and prescribe some medications. If they do, they’re connected directly to a Kaiser doctor who is chatting with a maximum of three other patients. And we are able, via a chat service that allows for uploading photos but doesn’t use video, to resolve a huge percentage of these encounters.”Ĭhat with a Doctor works like this: When patients go to Kaiser’s main website or to book an appointment, they have the option to use the chat service instead. “Predominantly, it’s people who either know they have something straightforward or are not sure if they need to be evaluated in person or if their condition is something serious. “We trialed this as a mechanism by which we would be able to help our members avoid unnecessary ER visits, but it has turned into something far bigger,” said Ari Melmed, MD, an ER doctor at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, oversees the Chat with a Doctor program. But Kaiser Permanente Colorado has discovered that, for the integrated system, a simple text chat is an easier sell - as its impressive uptake numbers demonstrate. When people think about direct-to-consumer telemedicine, they often think of video visits or phone calls.
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