Opening new pathways to care

Technology enabled care

eHealth

Getting to a medical appointment can be challenging, complicated by transportation logistics, travel times, child care and illness. A referral to a specialist often means scheduling another appointment and then waiting for that date to arrive.

Investments in eHealth, a variety of health care services enabled by technology and provided through video, phone calls and other digital connections, create alternate pathways to care that can reduce wait times and get people more quickly to the care they need. These innovations also support new collaboration among our providers across Vermont and northern New York.

What can eHealth help us achieve?

1. Reduce wait times for specialty care with eConsults.

After receiving formal referrals from their primary care provider, patients often need to schedule and wait for additional appointments. With eConsults, primary care providers are able to securely consult with specialists during a patient’s primary care visit, connecting patients to specialty care in real-time, addressing their needs more quickly and with fewer appointments.

Since launching in 2021, eConsults have quickly become an essential tool for helping our patients to access timely specialty care. Our clinicians initiated more than 1,000 eConsults during the past 12 months across 20 specialties, including:

  • Cardiology
  • Dermatology
  • Endocrinology
  • Gastroenterology
  • Geriatric psychiatry
  • Gynecology
  • Hepatitis C
  • Infectious disease
  • Interventional pain
  • Nephrology
  • Neurology (including two sub-specialties: stroke and neurological oncology)
  • Pelvic health
  • Pharmacy
  • Psychiatry
  • Pulmonology
  • Rheumatology
  • Sleep medicine
  • Urology

2. Bolster emergency care with eHealth innovations.

Strains on emergency departments (EDs) are at a critical level across our Network. Innovative eHealth programs can help immediately connect patients who come to the ED with the specialist care and consult they may need. 

TeleED, Telestroke & Tele-NICU

Using eHealth technologies, ED providers can consult with physicians at other Network hospitals on difficult cases or when patients are suffering from acute illness or trauma that requires specialty care, such as stroke or neonatal intensive care.

Remote Patient Observation & Triage

A new program using televideo will allow physicians to remotely triage ED patients, while another program will use eHealth for ED patient observation. Home care settings served by Home Health & Hospice continue to demonstrate effective use of eHealth for remote patient observation.

Tele Nicu being used in a hospital setting as told through iconography

Tele-NICU community partnerships

Through a telemedicine partnership with North Country Hospital’s maternal child health unit, the UVM Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit offers video consults in real-time to improve the quality of neonatal care and further support the region’s youngest patients.

3. Expand access with Electronic Health Records and MyChart.

Electronic health records enable quick and secure access to up-to-date patient records, which can lead to more coordinated and efficient care while reducing costs and administrative burdens. As of April 2022, all of our Network hospitals and clinics are connected to the Epic system.

Electronic Health Record patient benefits: 

  • Less paperwork. Patient records are inputted once then become electronically accessible across the Network.  
  • Providers have 24/7 access to the health information they need.

MyChart patient benefits: 

  • Convenient, real-time access to health records, 24/7.
  • Ability to request appointments, message providers, view test results and health records, pay bills, or renew medications.
  • MyChart self-scheduling: Over the next two years, self-scheduling will expand across more medical specialties and primary care.

100% of outpatient practices are able to offer video visits.

4. Make care more accessible and convenient.

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, we rapidly accelerated our efforts to provide care to most of our adult and pediatric patients through video and phone visits. This meant providing more than 1,500 of our providers with the needed equipment and educating thousands of patients on a different way to receive care. In the span of one month, we moved from 10 video visits a week to roughly 7,000 by the end of April 2020.

Although poor internet service across our region limits digital options for some patients, those without this limitation have responded positively to this approach. Patient surveys have shown high satisfaction with video visits in particular, with the majority of patients giving high marks when asked to rate their overall experience with this type of visit.

Today, 100% of our outpatient practices offer video visits. In the last 12 months, we have provided more than 110,000 video visits to our patients across the region.

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