New York-Presbyterian - IT Team of the Year

Company: NewYork-Presbyterian, New York, NY
Company Description: NewYork-Presbyterian is one of the nation’s most comprehensive academic health care delivery systems, dedicated to providing the highest quality, most compassionate care to patients in the New York metropolitan area and throughout the globe.
Nomination Category: Information Technology Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Information Technology Team of the Year

Nomination Title: NewYork-Presbyterian Digital Health Team for IT Team of the Year

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital(NYP) is anonprofitacademic medical centerinNew York Cityaffiliated with Columbia UniversityandWeill Cornell Medicine. Since early 2016, NYP’s Digital Health team has provided comprehensive telehealth services to patients across New York State. From early investments in direct-to-consumer telehealth to tailoring telehealth services to hard-to-access, vulnerable populations, the Digital Health team has consistently innovated in the delivery of telehealth, establishing over 50 unique programs.

NYP is at the forefront of the nationwide shift to patient-centered care. Recognizing telehealth’s vast potential to increase health access and equity, we conceptualized a Virtual Hospital, to integrate digital health solutions in patient careacross our enterprise.

In 2019, we began our efforts to build a Virtual Hospital, supporting each of our ten campuses with centrally housed digital health programs, providing a digitally connected ecosystem with multiple touchpoints throughout the patient care journey. By digitally transforming our clinical service lines, we empower patients to take a more active role in their healthcare, and increase their access to our services. Although designed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, this approach has proved critical to NYP’s successful response to the pandemic.

In creating our virtual hospital, we first built the technical infrastructure to support this digital health expansion. In January of 2020, after over a year of planning, NYP implemented the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) to replace our previously disjointed EMR experience. We moved all our digital health offerings to the Epic platform, allowing us to provide patients with a seamless, user-friendly experience. The new EMR allows us to integrate scheduling, billing, and revenue cycle tools into a single platform, replacing a range of outdated tools, providing new analytic capabilities, and making it easier and more efficient for our physicians to deliver outstanding patient care.

Alongside our new Epic EMR on the back-end, we expanded our patient facing features, through our Front Door to Care, improving patient experience and enhancing self-service. To do this, we launched “Connect” our new, rebranded consumer-facing app, with expanded capabilities, including enhanced communication with a patient’s care team, the ability to access medical records and test results, and initiating Video Visits with physicians.

These innovations are fundamental to our meeting the challenges posed by Covid-19. We realized early on the immense potential of our virtual health offerings to serve our patients from the safety of their homes. Because our digital health infrastructure was already in place, we were able to expand our Video Visit services to 4000 providers over a 2 week period. We also expanded access, allowing new patients (in addition to existing patients) to schedule a Video Visit with our physicians, all available via our Connect app.At the start of 2020, Video Visits made up 2% of our outpatient visits, increasing to 60% during peak Covid, and now make up 30% of our outpatient visits.

With these rapid technological changes, we understand the need to help patients adapt to our digital health offerings. We started a virtual patient ambassador (VPA) program, where patients receive a call from our VPAs a few days before their scheduled Video Visit. The VPAs help them set up their Connect portal account and walk them through how to start their Video Visit. We also address disparities in access to virtual care by working with an external vendor to provide Video Visits through an alternative platform for patients who have connectivity issues.

Through our expanded digital capabilities, we have been able to reach more patients, and empower patients to take charge of their own healthcare. Expanding our digital health platform has not only been crucial in our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but has expanded the reach of our care going forward.As we look to the future, we continue expanding our Virtual Hospital to reimagine facility-centered care, at-home care,and addressing health disparities through digital solutions, meeting the needs of all patients everywhere and at any time.

- 817,000activated Connect patient portal accounts
- ~ 70KVideo Visits per month (up from200 visits per month in 2018)
- 4000+providers offering Video Visits
- Improved access to care for vulnerable populations:84kof our Ambulatory Care Network (A.C.N.) patients now have an active Connect patient portal account; 37% of A.C.N. patients have had a successful video visit &59%of A.C.N. patients with an active Connect account have had a successful video visit.
- Virtual care now makes up~30%of our business vs 2% in 2019
- Patients have responded positively to our new Connect app, with90%always likely to recommend their provider &85%respondents reporting ease in communication over video