About This Blog

 

Sherri Dorfman, CEO, Stepping Stone Partners, Health Technology Innovation & Patient Experience Strategist

My blog is designed to spotlight healthcare organizations with innovative uses of technology & data to drive Care Coordination, Collaboration, Patient Engagement & Experience.

These patient centric approaches may influence your product & service roadmap, experiences, partnerships and marketing strategies.

MY EXPERTISE:

While consulting, I leverage my extensive healthcare landscape knowledge (acute, ambulatory, virtual, home), patient data expertise and patient experience skills to help companies make the right strategic business, product and marketing decisions. Services include:

1. Strategic Business Planning: Conducts market assessment to guide business, product and marketing strategies. Identifies and evaluates digital health solutions across categories to drive mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.  Defines and validates new business models, data-driven solutions and services. 

2. Patient Experience Strategy: Evaluates current patient experience through best practices framework. Plans, conducts and analyzes stakeholder research and devises journey maps highlighting experience enhancement opportunities, encompassing people, process and technology. 

3. Product & Marketing Strategy:  Co-creates with cohorts (e.g. patient, caregiver and care team) on AI driven health tech solutions. Develops differentiated value proposition story with outside- in view (VOC insights), for marketing, sales and investors.

Find out how I can help you. Email me at SDorfman@Stepping-Stone.net to set up an exploratory discussion.

Learn more about Me 

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Entries in online health and wellness support (16)

Banner Health brings AI driven virtual assistants for better patient experience 

Buoy Health AI triage botTrue to their mission “Making health care easier, so life can be better”, Banner Health has invested in digital health technologies to support their patient experience.

Banner Health, a large regional health care system headquartered in Phoenix, manages 28 acute hospitals across 6 western states, with 5,000+ Banner Health doctors and specialists and over 50 urgent care centers.

Given trends towards consumerism and digital health usage, Banner understands that many patients begin their care journey with internet searches, at a time when these patients feel sick and most vulnerable. Sorting through search responses, patients have the burden of finding trusted health information, interpreting what they need and figuring out where to go to address their latest health issue.  Unfortunately the default care setting for patients in the United States is the emergency room, which results in $32 billion in annual avoidable ED visits.  

Banner Health Triage Bot

When Banner’s Digital Business group looked for potential solutions, they wanted to understand the patient’s journey and explore digital solutions to complement their high touch hospital experience.

“Through research, we learned that our patients often do not know what is causing their symptoms or what to do about it. They do not know whether to go see their primary care doctor, visit an urgent care facility or go directly to the hospital ER”, explains Dr. Jeff Johnson, Banner Health’s Vice President of Innovation and Digital Business.

With their commitment to delivering both a superior patient experience and reduce unnecessary spending, Banner has tested the idea of empowering customers with a digital tool containing clinical content to engage and triage them to the right care setting.

During the fall of 2019, Banner Health evaluated different digital triage tools and selected Buoy Health’s AI assisted chat bot after both an internal clinical leadership evaluation and patient testing for value and desirability.

As part of their solution evaluation, Banner recruited patients who had gone to a doctor, ER or Urgent Care in the last 30 days and asked them to think about the symptoms that had driven their visit while testing several digital triaging tools.

“Our patients commented that the Buoy bot was ‘easy to use’ and they liked not having to log in to use it. Patients felt the bot interaction was also ‘easy to understand’ and was ‘credible’. These patients did not ‘second guess’ the information that they received in the bot exchange”, shares Johnson.

While preparing for the launch, Banner worked closely with their clinical team, informing them about the triage tool and how it works. If the patient mentions using the bot, Banner wanted clinicians to be aware of the digital tool, acknowledge that the patient had invested time into learning about her condition before arriving and recognize that it is part of the Banner patient experience.

In early January, Banner soft launched the Buoy Health bot across all 28-hospitals with a “Get Care Now” link on their website, giving customers the option of interacting with this tool or calling their Nurse on Call.

After clicking on the “Get Health Now” button, patients are asked questions about their profile (e.g. gender, age) and specific symptoms (e.g. which ones, how long, better/same/worse than before).  Banner likes that the bot gets smarter with each patient interaction. Since the Buoy digital tool is available to consumers on the internet and patients across different health care systems, this bot has over 3 million interactions per month.

To evaluate this digital tool, Banner gathers feedback from patients about their bot interaction. Specifically the “Buoy bot askes the patient at the end of an exchange to rate the experience and share what she plans to do next (e.g. wait and see, doctor, urgent care, ER).  So far we have received excellent star ratings for the tool, 4.7 out of 5”, adds Johnson.

“Working closely with Buoy, we have learned about the patient’s expectations for their experience with this type of digital tool. The bot exchange cannot be too short so that the patient doesn’t trust the responses. And the text exchange cannot be too long so that the patient feels the tool doesn’t know what it is doing”, Johnson comments.

Banner’s Digital Business team is looking closely at bot tool usage and feedback to guide further development.  The bot reporting will give them insight into which care setting patients were directed, what questions they asked and which symptoms and conditions were discussed in the exchange with the patient.

In the first 3 weeks after launch, the Buoy triage bot has had 1,200+ users. Moving beyond the soft launch, Banner plans to incorporate the triage bot in their mobile app and to promote it as an option when patients call the Ask the Nurse line. Banner is discussing developing a Triage Summary Report which captures the information that the patient has already provided to share with her doctor. Banner is also looking to expand care settings to include directing the patient to a virtual visit in the right situation.

Banner Health Emergency Department (ED) Bot

Lifelink ED chabot

Like many of the ER experiences across the country, Banner Health patients want more information and communication about what is happening and what will be happening next to adjust their expectations.

The Banner Health team brainstormed about how to help patients get the information that they need throughout their visit without having to trying to find their doctor, walk up to the nurses station or wait for the nurse to come to their room.

Johnson shares that “we found an interesting chatbot solution from a start- up, Lifelink. We started slowly by having patients use the bot on their smart phones while in the ED and we manually responded to their questions. This gave us tremendous insight into what patients wanted to know and when. Based on this insight, we designed the chatbot (available both in English and Spanish) to give the patient a status from the time her labs (or images) are ordered to the time they are ready and then reviewed by her doctor. We needed to set expectations that the lab will take 45 mins before it is done. In order to enable these real time updates on labs and images, we integrated the LifeLink bot into our EMR. We promote that the patient signs up to our patient portal to access all of the notes, labs and images from her ED visit”.

Since the ED bot was rolled out across all 28 Banner Hospitals, there are over 100,000 patient users, one million plus conversations with an average of 5-10 conversations with the bot per person. 

“We have seen our patient satisfaction score for our EDs increase by up to 35%. This ED bot is such a satisfier”, Johnson explains. “Here are some patient comments about the value of using our ED bot”:

“It was nice to be given updates instead of just sitting in a chair and waiting for someone to get to me.”

“It gave me updates on my progress without bothering the nurses.”

“Very informative, relieved my husband’s worries by 90%”

In the near future, Banner Health is planning to “connect the dots” and engage the patient from the moment of interest and throughout their care journey. “We are looking to begin at the first part of the journey when the patient goes online to let us know that they are coming to the ED. Our ED bot will let the patient know that ‘we will be waiting for her’, provide map, picture of the entrance and parking directions. We also want to have the ED bot support the patient post discharge, reminding her to fill her medication, the date of her follow up visit, signs of what to look for and where to go if there is a relapse”, Johnson explains.

Later in this year, Banner Health is planning to extend the bot to inpatient care, with the goals of helping the patient get the highest outcomes and reducing their length of stay. This inpatient bot project is part of a bigger ‘patient flow’ initiative. Banner wants to get patient’s engaged at the beginning of their stay for a successful discharge. The bot will give guidance and recommendations so that the patient improves her eating, walking and bowel movement activities. Banner is also exploring ways to engage the family/care network to ensure an optimal recovery.  

Intelligent, On- Demand Healthcare Concierge Provides Personalized Patient Experience

 

It all started with a simple question one day, and grew into a trusted health relationship a few short months later. Sarah was very busy at work that crisp fall morning and had only a few minutes to log in and ask about her daughter’s diabetes medication. Sarah was comforted by the response and a bit intrigued when her Health Assistant Harriet introduced herself and explained that she is a resource to help her and her family with any of her health questions or concerns. They began a conversation about her daughter’s condition and a trusted relationship began.

Later that week Harriet made a follow up call to see if Sarah was able to pick up her daughter’s medication and asked how everything was going. Sarah mentioned that she finally got her daughter’s pills and confided that she was completely overwhelmed. Sarah shared that she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and that her husband was often unavailable as he traveled constantly for work. She explained that she had a hard time getting to her treatments. After their call, Harriet explored and evaluated resources, and scheduled transportation to help Sarah get to her next appointment. Harriet put the appointment confirmation into Sarah’s patient portal and set up a reminder, including date and time, about the ride to her next treatment.

This may sound like fiction in the current healthcare environment, where services are siloed and patients are burdened with making their own decisions around healthcare – often complex and costly. Sarah is relieved to have this service today. She first learned from her employer about the Accolade platform and health advisor service last summer. It wasn’t until she reached out with a simple question to her health assistant that Sarah experienced the true value of having a healthcare advisor on her side.

A 2016 Harris Poll reveals that 84% of working families placed a value on having a single, trusted resource to help support their healthcare needs. Busy families have limited time and resources so they appreciate having one place to go to help them understand their options and sort through their healthcare decisions. 

Personalized Patient Experience

With the Accolade Health Assistant as the single point of contact for her family, Sarah is able to reach out to Harriet for guidance all along her and her family’s healthcare journeys.  Accolade integrates high tech and high touch to deliver a superior patient experience with lower healthcare costs. 

Accolade Health Assistant Harriet accesses the Accolade platform to interact with and personalize her support for Sarah:

Preferred Communication: Harriet engages with Sarah and her family based on their communication preferences. Sarah likes phone calls and email through the Accolade online portal. Sarah’s husband Sam prefers secure text messages since he can send quick messages and follow up later during his business trips.  

Personalized & Proactive Experience: Harriet’s interactions with Sarah are driven by rich patient profile information, which contains contextual information, social determinants of health and service utilization. Sarah and her family’s profiles are updated with data collected over time and more than 150 data feeds integrated into the Accolade platform. The HIPAA-certified approach creates profiles that are continuously analyzed through sophisticated algorithms and health assistant reviews, which allow for personalized conversations around individual health needs, care gaps and obstacles.

A recent Accolade platform trigger prompts Harriet to reach out to Sarah’s husband Sam when she notices that he is still refilling this pain medication many weeks after his knee surgery.  Harriet sent a text to Sam to inquire about his knee surgery. After a text exchange, Harriett suggested that he see his doctor to discuss his persistent pain.

Patient Education & Connected Health: Sarah and her family can access educational information and recommended health apps. Before Sarah’s husband knee operation, Health Assistant Harriet texted Sam with a link to a video and suggested questions to prepare for his surgery and provider discussion. 

When Harriett spoke with Sarah about her daughter’s diabetes appointment and care plan, Harriet informed Sarah about the Livongo mobile diabetes application available through her employer’s health plan. Together, they review the Livongo app, which can help Sarah and her daughter better track and manage her diabetes. With Accolade and Livongo, Sarah is able to share information from the mobile app with her daughter’s doctor, giving him insight into her problems with controlling her A1C levels.

Continuous Connection to Clinical Resources and Support:  Harriett asked Sarah if she would like to speak with an oncology nurse to help prepare her for her upcoming oncologist appointment. Margaret, an Accolade Clinical Health Assistant and RN, joined them on the line and offered empathetic support by asking more about Sarah’s diagnosis, where she was in her care plan with her doctor, whether she had a support network and what was planned for her next appointment. Margaret provided Sarah with questions to ask her oncologist and recommended a follow-up discussion.

Intelligent Engagement: Harriet and her Health Assistant team are continuously alerted by the Accolade platform. On an ongoing basis Accolade gathers, aggregates and models de-identified data to trigger alerts and guide Health Assistants in further personalizing their interactions with their clients.  Health Assistants are prompted to ask questions about health behaviors and emerging symptoms, applying specialized training and skillset. 

Patient Experience Success Measures:

Paul Csigi, Director of Benefits at Philadelphia- based Temple University Health System (TUHS), rolled out the Accolade solution in 2015 and has over 7,000 employees on the platform today.  “So much of healthcare is getting people to the right place at the right time. Accolade has created an experience where our employees build a relationship with an assistant that gives them what they need, when they need it. Accolade takes a single problem that the patient has called in about and creates a relationship to support the family on an ongoing basis. With all of the information about our employees, Accolade addresses the whole person, connects the patient with clinical resources, and continues to reach out. This helps treat our employees sooner, which is less expensive for our organization.”

In addition to financial measures, TUHS monitors qualitative feedback from employees. With the Accolade platform outreach (phone or online), TUHS is able to capture the patient’s experience engaging with their Accolade Health Assistant:

“I'd like to thank Temple for the Accolade program. We have been going through some really tough times…..my health assistants have been a big support and a big help to my family in helping to guide us to the right doctors to help with family issues and illnesses. I really appreciate this program. Without it, I'd really be lost.”

 “It is great having that person who is able to explain things to you and walk you through the process….It makes navigating the current health care world so much easier and less stressful. That is exactly what you need when you are dealing with a health care issue.”

 “I spoke with my health assistant and then with the nurse, and they were incredibly helpful. They spent a lot of time on the phone with me, helping me understand how to navigate the system, and what questions to ask.”

 “He [Clinical Health Assistant] made this very difficult hospitalization for my husband an easier journey. Without him, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish many things….I am extremely grateful.”

Patient Experience Journey

With two years of the Accolade solution under their belt, Paul Csigi and his team are considering new ways to support TUHS employees. “I have an employee population with diabetes and heart disease. I am interested in learning more about Accolade’s partnerships to bring patient data into the platform to support these populations.”  Csigi sees the benefit of bringing in data from patient devices and smart applications. Integrating this data with the patient’s medical record gives new insights to Accolade Health Assistants, empowering them to deliver even better support and drive improved outcomes.

Dartmouth- Hitchcock’s ImagineCare Platform Leverages Wearables, Connected Health & Analytics for Personalized Patient Care

Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H), an innovative New England healthcare system with 1,000+ providers is committed to creating a “sustainable health system”, which proactively engages patients through new care models to achieve the triple aim.

Over the years, D-H has invested in technologies that empower patients to collaborate with providers through shared decision tools and Telehealth, treating “patients and their families as partners in care”.

D-H has been a pioneer in innovative payment models with both the government and commercial payers.

In early 2015, D-H’s leadership team committed to create a truly patient-centric healthcare organization, which delivers high quality proactive personalized care to the patient beyond the hospital walls.

“Dartmouth-Hitchcock purposefully set out to assemble a team of employees with backgrounds from other consumer industries like hospitality and retail that would augment the world-class capabilities of our clinical staff, to improve the health care delivery experience”, explains Vin Fusca, COO, ImagineCare.

With their consumer- centric “healthcare without boundaries” vision, D-H management has designed a truly “care- driven” solution.  ImagineCare, a cloud- based platform, enables providers to closely collaborate with each patient to meet her care goals at any time and from anywhere.

ImagineCare treats the patient holistically through the active and passive collection of a comprehensive set of patient data. In addition to condition specific evidence-based care pathways (i.e. ImagineCare Hypertension Pathway, COPD Pathway, CHF Pathway, Diabetes Pathway), D-H incorporates a “Core Health Pathway” to capture steps, heart-rate activity, sleep, and stress (Behavioral Health), providing contextual insight into the patient’s health.  

With ImagineCare, the Provider and patient have a window into the latest health status for insight and action. In the background, ImagineCare collects information from the patient (i.e. sensor- based devices, apps), combines it with EMR data (i.e. patient visits, labs, meds) and processes it through complex clinical care algorithms with machine intelligence to pinpoint when the patient is at risk. High tech meets high touch when ImagineCare notifies the RN or Health Navigator to reach out to the patient for real-time support and intervention. 

“ImagineCare leverages the best available technologies to assist with care, but does not replace the importance of the human touch to drive behavior change. ImagineCare seamlessly combines these components to help patients achieve their health goals”, shares Dr. Ethan Berke, Chief Medical Officer, ImagineCare.

 Patient Experience

During her recent doctor’s visit, (patient) Pam decides to participate in D-H’s new ImagineCare Program to help her lose weight and proactively manage her hypertension.

Within 48 hours, Pam receives an email to quickly enroll in ImagineCare and a welcome call to discuss her personal health goals. Two days later a personalized ImagineCare Kit (box) is delivered to her door containing a program overview, a wireless blood pressure cuff and an activity band, devices which fit her selected health goals. Pam follows the instructions to connect her devices to the ImagineCare app.

During enrollment, Pam’s shares her profile information such as personal health goals, challenges, communication preferences, family support, and defines her “medical neighborhood” (i.e. Providers, pharmacy, caregivers). She adds more information when responding to daily questions to create a rich picture about her health needs and resources required to tackle care plan activities.

Anxious about her attempts to lose weight, Pam indicates in the mobile app that she only wants to receive texts to help her stay on track with her weight-management goal.

Through the ImagineCare mobile app, Pam answers daily questions about how she is really doing, while her wireless blood pressure cuff and activity band retrieve and send real-time measures. Pam receives nudges, encouraging messages and digital check-ins to ensure she stays on track with her care plan. Yesterday’s text asked Pam if she was okay since she hadn’t provided her blood pressure as expected.

D-H’s RNs and Health Navigators continuously monitor Pam’s health status, review her trends, and respond to risk warnings by reaching out via text which is her communication preference. Since Pam designates her daughter as a personal health representative within the mobile app, ImagineCare’s RNs are permitted to speak with her about Pam’s health.

ImagineCare Success Measurement

ImagineCare is designed to empower a health care organization to right-size provider visits, lower ED utilization and decrease admission and re-admissions. ImagineCare provides a more engaging solution to help health care delivery systems increase quality of care, decrease cost and improve patient experience.  

In addition to these quantitative measures, D-H actively gathers qualitative patient feedback to understand the patient experience. Comments from patients about engaging in the ImagineCare program include:

“I monitor my blood pressure every day, and after a particularly stressful day at the office I went home, took my blood pressure, and five minutes later one of the nurses called and talked me through an immediate care protocol.”

“It has improved my ability to manage my health…The ability to connect with people for support and also send information to my healthcare providers, makes it easier.”

"I am extremely impressed with the ImagineCare phone app. It is very easy to use and seems very intuitive”.

ImagineCare Future

ImagineCare is constantly updating its services and products based on patience engagement data, clinical data, and new technological capabilities coming to market. In a digital health landscape that is becoming more fragmented, ImagineCare will continually create holistic, customer-centered health services to better care for patient populations.

D-H’s team has packaged up the ImagineCare platform for other providers, payers and (self- insured) employers to deliver personalized patient care for better outcomes.  

Virtua Navigates Orthopedic Patients Pre- & Post-Surgery with Improved Patient Engagement and Care Coordination

WELLBE PLATFORM FOR PATIENT ENGAGEMENTWith an aging population and increase in chronic conditions including obesity, the demand for hip and knee operation is increasing dramatically. A study in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery estimates by 2030 “demand for total hip arthroplasties to grow by 174% to 572,000 and demand for primary total knee arthroplasties by 673% to 3.48 million procedures”.

Responding to this strong demand and high procedure expense, CMS launched the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) payment bundle April 1st, focusing on cost and quality over a 90-day period beginning with the hospital admission. The CMS CJR Payment bundle is initially for about 800 selected hospitals across the country. 

Although Virtua, one of New Jersey’s largest health systems with hospitals, surgical and rehabilitation centers, is voluntarily participating in the BPCI payment bundle, their investment in the orthopedic patient experience at their Joint Replacement Institute (JRI) started long before the payment model changes. 

Virtua Health’s Orthopedic Patient Care Journey 

Back in 2000, Virtua adopted the Six Sigma methodology and launched the STAR initiative to deliver an "outstanding patient experience”.

“When we look at how we can change and improve a process, we focus on the patient and understand what they need, not what we think they need,” explains Kate Gillespie, AVP of Virtua’s Orthopedic Service Line. 

With a commitment to enhancing the orthopedic (hip, knee) surgery experience, Virtua listened to patients discuss their challenges and needs. Through focus group research (Spring 2015), Virtua learned:
• Orthopedic patients need a lot of information to get ready for their surgery but are overwhelmed when inundated with too much at one time.
• Patients place a high value on their doctor’s suggestions to achieve best results.
• Patients that are prepared are more confident and will participate in the process leading to improved outcomes.
  
“We learned that as patients prepared for surgery, they were asked many of the same questions by different members of our care team,” said Gillespie. “We needed to improve the patient experience and ensure the consistency of information shared along the patient journey. We also wanted to engage the family to support the patient before and after surgery and decided to require that each patient has a ‘care partner’.” 

The Virtua JRI team looked for technology to continuously engage patients and families, from on-boarding before surgery, to educating and guiding them from discharge through recovery.  The tool needed to be actionable, collecting essential information from the patient (i.e. concerns, pain levels) and informing Nurse Navigators when patients fall off track.

Virtua JRI chose to implement a Connected CarePath for Total Joint Replacement from Wellbe, a solution provider in Madison, Wisconsin. Working closely with Wellbe, Virtua customized their CarePath with their own health history and sleep apnea surveys, scheduling and care plan content (delivered via “CareCards”). 

Patient Journey 

PATIENT CREATES CARECIRCLE ON WELLBEDuring the initial visit to the surgeon’s office, patient Patty is given information about Wellbe, a personalized care plan for her pre-and post-surgical journey. She signs up with the Nurse Navigator and receives a Welcome email. Patty shares this information and invites her family ‘Care Partner’ to join her CareCircle to access her resources.
 
Pre- Surgery: Beginning 4-6 weeks prior to surgery, Patty views a care plan with a personalized set of “CareCards” explaining the operation and process to successfully prepare including preadmissions testing and health clearance forms. She receives a “CareCard” introduction to her Nurse Navigator. Every CareCard is delivered “from” her doctor or another member of her care team to motivate compliance. Patty receives reminder messages and checklist items leading up to the surgery and can refer to any completed CareCards in the “library” such as “How to prepare for the day of surgery.”  

“Our patients really like the library feature. Before we launched the Wellbe platform, patients were given a Joint Replacement booklet. Now patients and families have all the surgery information at their fingertips.  Patients traveling to our Institute can prepare for their surgery by viewing videos instead of attending an in-person class,” adds Gillespie.  

Post –Surgery: Within Wellbe, Patty views discharge information such as symptoms to watch for and completes surveys so that her care team can manage her recovery. Patty’s Nurse Navigator monitors her “Progress Report” with required actions and contacts her with any concerns. 

“We believe this post-surgery engagement is important to prevent readmissions by ensuring the patient understands how to take medications, manage pain and follow outpatient physical therapy,” Gillespie shares.
 
Patient Engagement Results

Since launching the Wellbe platform in December 2015, Virtua JRI has enrolled 700 patients.  Patients span every socio-economic level and range from 40- 90 years old, with the majority in their 70s. 

“We are signing up 86% of our surgery patients which is much higher than we expected. The remaining patients either did not have an email address or didn’t have a friend or family member to help them,” explains Gillespie.
 
Virtua is evaluating success based on a few factors. Through a Wellbe survey, they are measuring how prepared the patient feels using the platform. With Wellbe reporting, Virtua is also measuring the patient’s engagement and compliance with required CareCards.

Patients have shared positive comments about their experience using the tool - “grateful for the support received”. Nurse Navigators have also provided feedback - the Wellbe platform has helped them be more efficient in their patient care. Through “one tool”, nurses are able to “organize and track patient progress and communicate with the rest of the team” (i.e. physician office, pre-admission testing department). 

Virtua has received suggested enhancements such as “defining an end time for a patient to be on the platform” and removing the medication form since patients “already gave the medication list to my surgeon.” Virtua has also added a link to the “Virtua Orthopedic Endowment”, giving patients an opportunity to give back. 

Future Opportunities 

Virtua initially launched the Wellbe platform without tying it into their Electronic Medical Record. “We are considering integrating Wellbe into our EMR so that the patient’s surgical chart will be easily available on one site for our Nurse Navigator.”   

“Wellbe provides a key to patient engagement by keeping them engaged and participating towards a successful surgical journey. Virtua is determining where we can use this tool in other service lines such as Spine, Bariatric, Oncology and Maternity, which are all education-intensive clinical episodes.” 

“This program aligns with our vision in keeping our focus on the patient /family experience, and provides us with an opportunities to participate in their surgical journey”, Gillespie concludes.  

 

Stanford’s ClickWell: Virtual Model for Primary Care

In January 2015, Stanford Medicine launched ClickWell Care, a new type of Primary Care clinic which leverages technology to allow patients to virtually connect with their own Stanford primary care clinicians and wellness coaches via video or phone visits.  Patients use the MyHealth mobile app to schedule and conduct a video visit and share home health device data with the care team. Through this model, patients can choose to receive all of their primary care including integrated wellness coaching virtually, unless the physician indicates the need to come into the clinic for vaccinations, pap smears, procedures, or other physical exam needs.

“Initially we created this virtual model for our ACO. We knew that 18-30 year olds were not interacting with primary care and were choosing to go to the Emergency Department or urgent care for their needs. During focus groups with this patient population, we learned they were so busy and didn’t have time to come into the office but really valued the relationship with their doctor. They wanted to receive care from their doctor but it wasn’t available in a way that was convenient to them.  We knew that we needed to use technology to help support this relationship and not replace it”, explains Sumbul Desai, Medical Director ClickWell Care and Vice Chair of Strategy and Innovation in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

ClickWell clinicians and coaches support healthy patients and the ‘rising risk’ (e.g. up to 2 conditions), who are employees of Stanford University, Stanford Adult and Children’s Hospitals. With this highly educated, tech savvy patient population, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage mobile tools to enhance the patient experience.

Patients see a doctor for primary care visits and engage with a wellness coach on health goals (i.e. weight loss, stress, activity, and nutrition) and to receive support for chronic conditions (i.e. diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia).  “The average age of a ClickWell patient is 36 years old.  However, we have a growing group of 40-65 year olds, part of the ‘rising risk’ population, who prefer to do the majority of their visits virtually. These patients feel comfortable interacting by phone or video because they have a better understanding of the healthcare system and their health goals than our younger patients”, Desai shares.

The ClickWell Care program is designed to give patients complete control over how they want to access and interact with their doctor/coach and convenience of extended hours. Although patients have the option of scheduling a face to face appointment, they are incentivized to participate in a “no fee” virtual phone or video visit. Patients simply log into the MyHealth portal for their virtual appointment. 

To date in the ClickWell program, there have been 2,142 visits; 43% conducted in-person, 32% through phone visits and 25% via video visits. ClickWell staff have seen 1,223 patients. Although 30% of new patients start off with a virtual visit, most prefer to meet their doctor first in-person. After an initial face to face visit, 60% opt to see their doctor virtually for their return visits via phone or video.

MyHealth Mobile AppAll patient information from the virtual visit is transmitted to the Epic EMR and is accessible through the MyHealth portal. Patients can ask follow up questions through the portal.  When patients need to have blood work done, they are directed to the lab without having to come into the doctor’s office, and lab results are incorporated into the EMR with portal access. “Stanford was the first to use Epic’s integrated telemedicine service because we wanted this visit information available to patients in the portal and clinicians in their daily workflow”, confirms Lauren Cheung, Physician, ClickWell Care, and Medical Director, Strategic Innovations at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“One myth about telemedicine is that many patients choose to do video visits over phone visits. The truth is that it is an extra effort for the patient to participate in a video visit since the patient needs to be in front of a computer or mobile screen versus the phone visit which can be done while walking around”,  Cheung adds.

“Back in 2013, we rolled out video visits as part of our primary care practice but we didn’t see a strong uptake. When we conceived the ClickWell Care program, we knew that we needed to introduce wellness coaching to provide a complete overall healthcare experience and deliver a higher level of healthcare service to our patients”, describes Desai.

Strong collaboration with IT and Operations have been pivotal in implementing this new care model. Through this collaboration, ClickWell has been able to leverage the new MyHealth app developed internally and has worked closely with IT to improve the platform and video visit capabilities to provide an excellent patient experience.

As part of the ClickWell Care program, the MyHealth mobile app helps strengthen care collaboration. The doctor/coach prescribes the health tracking app to the patient as a way to monitor key measures which may include steps, weight and blood pressure. The patient uses the MyHealth app to upload tracking data from Withings, Fitbit and Apple HealthKit to the EMR, sharing health status between visits. “When I see a patient with blood pressure trending higher, I ask the patient to schedule an online visit so that we can discuss how to address this through diet or medication changes”, Cheung explains.

ClickWell Lessons Learned

The Stanford Medicine team has gained insight into ClickWell Care program usage, the telehealth platform and mobile app to bring the most value to primary care patients and providers. They understand that it is not about the technology but instead about how the technology is put into the care model through a program.

Patients have shared many positive comments about the ClickWell Care program:

“Video visits allowed me to continue with pressing work concerns, instead of taking time off work to travel to a clinic. Video visits allowed me to chat with a Doctor late in the evening, and appointments were very easy to get.  I felt that my virtual care was more personalized and provided a better experience.

“I have not had many medical issues until recently. It is such a relief being able to ask questions and get answers quickly. My wellness appointments have me watching my diet and exercise regimen. Everything is done efficiently. I cannot say enough about the whole team that has been watching over me.”

“My experience with the ClickWell Clinic has been extremely informative and remarkably efficient. The flexibility they offer works perfect for people with busy schedules, without sacrificing the quality of care. The model of the Clinic makes other forms of healthcare communication feel outdated.”  

“I have never had better communication and quicker responses than I have since becoming part of this program. I travel a lot and therefore keeping up via phone calls is not that practical. Being able to send messages electronically and to have an appointment via video chat is ideal.”

Doctors and wellness coaches have provided mostly positive feedback as well:

“Overall my experience with virtual visits in the clinic has been very positive. Compared to my previous experience with only in-person visits, it seems like the virtual option may make wellness patients more likely to continue with follow-ups. The integration with the doctors is also helpful in learning more about the patients and providing well-rounded care. It is a unique experience to be able to discuss treatments so closely with the patient’s doctors and in such a timely manner.”

“The integration of clinical care with wellness coaching has been phenomenal. I couldn’t imagine going back to health coaching without it. I am able to provide more targeted, individualized, and thorough care to my patients since I have full access to their medical records, provider notes, and work directly with their primary care physicians. Working directly alongside physicians has helped me to expand my knowledge on chronic disease management, stay up to date on clinical guidelines and recommendations.”

“As a provider, the technologies we use in this clinic allow us to quickly connect with our patients and address concerns for our patients proactively. The extended hours also allow for expanded patient access, as well as a flexible schedule for providers who staff the clinic who may desire alternative hours outside of the usual 9-5 business day.” 

“Through our discussions with patients, we have also heard some suggestions for change. In the beginning, we were contacting patients to convince them to switch from in person to virtual visits. This frustrated some patients and most wanted to stay with the modality that they had initially chosen”, Desai shares. 

Future ClickWell Care

As with other healthcare systems across the country, Stanford Medicine sees what is happening with the retail pharmacies increasing care access to patients. However, they believe this only fragments care because the visits are outside of the patient/doctor relationship. ClickWell Care is designed to be “longitudinal” and not episodic.

In 2016, Stanford Medicine is looking to extend into specialty care. “We are interested in integrating preventative cardiology for our patients since care entails discussing and improving risk factors for cardiovascular disease, which can be done virtually. Preventative cardiology patients would also benefit from wellness coaching to improve their risk factors for disease.

We also want to expand the use of connected health devices. Currently, very few patients upload and share their data with our care team. We are planning to incorporate this health tracking into a program for a  patient population (e.g. specific chronic conditions) and integrate this information into clinical workflow to ensure that these patients receive excellent care. With our Precision Health initiative, we are not just interested in treating illness but rather finding tools to deliver a personalized health and wellness experience to ensure the best outcomes”, Desai concludes.