Albert Einstein Medical Center Serves Up Telehealth From 4 Vendors With Fcc Grant

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In the state of Pennsylvania, only urgent medical care was permitted for several months, which created an instant barrier to receiving routine, follow-up and preventive care.

“We were almost immediately able to overcome that challenge and deliver care to our patients using a telehealth solution when patients were unable to come to us face-to-face,” said Reshma Patel Stone, associate vice president of planning and business development at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

“Although the statewide mandates have been lifted for care delivery, we still use telehealth as a solution for our patients who feel safer at home.

“To protect our staff and patients who are in the hospital or in our clinics, we use telehealth to care for those suspected to have COVID-19 or who have COVID-19 symptoms without bringing them into the office and unnecessarily exposing others to the virus,” she added.

The second challenge that telehealth has helped the health system overcome is that of communication with patient family members and loved ones for decision-making. It often is challenging to organize a meeting date ...
... and time with family members and a care team.

Telehealth has been an elegant solution to this and has allowed staff to hold family meetings where care providers can show their face via video and provide time to answer questions, she said. This also has been highly effective in coordinating multiple physicians caring for the same patient on one video call, she added.

“The pandemic did not take away the need for support groups and education sessions, and our telehealth technologies allowed us to transition these group meetings to virtual events where our community can see each other, ask questions and meet care team members,” Stone said.

“This has been such a successful transition and due to the significant number of patients and community members participating, we expect to continue to hold virtual support groups, education sessions and seminars well into the future.

“Additionally, we were able to use telehealth for various other providers, including, but not limited to, genetic counselors, social workers and dieticians,” she continued. “Dieticians found this extremely useful, as they were able to work with patients on reading labels and seeing what is in their fridge and pantry if the patient was comfortable enough to share.”

Finally, a tremendous challenge that telehealth continues to allow the health system to overcome is that of getting patients safely to the provider for care.

“Many of our patients struggle with transportation issues, whether it is available or accessible public transportation or physical disabilities that make a trip to the doctor’s office difficult,” Stone said. “Telehealth has helped us work around this, and we have given our patients with these concerns a direct connection to a doctor’s visit from the comfort of their home.

“We have additionally implemented a process wherein our nurses who conduct home visits for our most high-risk patients bring tablet technology to their bedside in their home and help them navigate through their telehealth visit,” she noted.

“In some of our primary care locations, we have implemented the ability to connect with a specialist via a telehealth visit while the patient is already at the primary care office to avoid having to make multiple trips.”

PROPOSAL

The virtual care technology vendors Albert Einstein Medical Center currently uses include Teladoc, Doximity, EMOpti and Zoom.

“Focusing primarily on Doximity and Zoom, given that the majority of our virtual care occurs using these platforms, the proposals were very similar,” Stone explained. “Both offered a video platform through which our users can send appointment links to patients and connect to them in order to conduct a video visit.

“Some differences with each vendor exist in terms of how the links are sent and the availability or need for a smartphone app to conduct the visit,” she continued. “Both vendors are HIPAA-compliant and work with healthcare providers nationally. They have both been recognized as trusted consultation platforms and have stable, secure video quality for our patients and providers.”