Rapid Deployment of Inpatient Telemedicine in Response to COVID-19 Across Three Health Systems
This on-demand webinar does not offer CE credit.
A JAMIA Journal Club webinar – part of AMIA’s COVID-19 Resource Center.
Vilendrer S, Patel B, Chadwick W, et al. Rapid Deployment of Inpatient Telemedicine In Response to COVID-19 Across Three Health Systems. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2020;27(7):1102-1109. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocaa077
Watch the Recording
Presenter
Stacie Vilendrer, MD, MBA
Manager
Maryam Zolnoori, PhD
Moderator
Mustafa Ibraheem Hussain
Statement of Purpose
As healthcare systems grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many are exploring the adoption of telemedicine in novel settings to protect patients and health workers from viral transmission and reduce the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). While the use of telemedicine has not been historically widespread, the recent relaxation of federal privacy restrictions and increased reimbursement for telemedicine has temporarily lifted key barriers to broader use. Telemedicine in the inpatient setting has been recognized as a potentially useful infection control tool, though evaluative literature is lacking.
In order to inform health systems’ ongoing improvement in quickly standing up telemedicine practices, we led an inquiry into the efforts of three affiliated health systems, including an academic medical center, a pediatric hospital, and a county-owned health system, each of which took diverse paths to rapidly deploy inpatient telemedicine at the outset of the COVID crisis in March 2020. Given the need for a rapidly deployed solution in the setting of an anticipated COVID-19 surge, each opted to implement telemedicine via consumer-grade technology, including hardware (i.e. tablets) and software (i.e. web conferencing system). Existing familiarity with these technologies amongst clinicians and patients facilitated rapid adoption, yet ongoing challenges remain to optimize clinical workflow and system design. Working through an informatics lens, we aimed to better understand how these systems were deployed, including considerations across diverse populations.
Target Audience
The target audience for this activity is professionals and students interested in health informatics.
Learning Objectives
The general learning objective for all of the JAMIA Journal Club webinars is that participants will
- Use a critical appraisal process to assess article validity and to gauge article findings' relevance to practice
After this live activity, the participant should be better able to:
- Weigh patient and system considerations involved in deploying a telemedicine solution, including the interaction between system design, clinical workflows and the patient experience
- Identify variation of needs within diverse populations and explore how telemedicine solutions might be tailored to address those needs
Commercial Support
No commercial support was received for this activity.
Disclosures for this Activity
JAMIA Journal Club presenter Stacie Vilendrer discloses that she has received grant/research support from the Stanford-Intermountain Fellowship in Population Health & Delivery Science; Stanford Health Care; and Intermountain Health; and that she has served as a medical advisor to AirX Health Home Monitoring, and Spect, Inc, both of which were non-financial relationships.
The following presenters, planners, and staff who are in a position to control the content of this activity disclose that they and their life partners have no relevant financial relationships with commercial interests:
JAMIA Journal Club Presenters: Birju Patel, Christopher Sharp
JAMIA Journal Club planners: Michael Chiang, Mustafa I. Hussain, Maryam Zolnoori
AMIA staff: Susanne Arnold, Pesha Rubinstein