Patient portal opens new entry points to care at Lurie Children’s Hospital
Before the growth, adoption and use of the patient portal, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago had only two points of access for patients seeking care: calling the centralized access center or walking into the emergency room.
THE PROBLEM
There were multiple phone numbers associated with each of the individual specialties, with complex phone trees that sometimes routed to the centralized access center or sometimes went to the specialty a patient wanted to make an appointment with. Be that as it may, it was a time-consuming process.
Lurie Children’s patients and families experienced inconsistent scheduling and registration issues and limited appointment availability, leading to long delays in care. And with more than 50% of patients on Medicaid, time is difficult to find for many parents and a scheduling option to receive care at Lurie Children’s should not be a barrier to care, said Ravi Patel, vice president of digital health at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital or Chicago.
PROPOSAL
“A patient portal was proposed as part of our core digital front door platform, where we transformed the high-touch, phone-based system into an omnichannel engagement system and developed end-to-end functionality,” explains Patel. “The digital front door strategy linked to the patient portal, interactive websites and marketing, two-way texting and a single telephone system.
“Within these various patient engagement systems, functions such as digital registration, appointment scheduling, digital tools for clinic visits, virtual care delivery and feedback all became possible and integrated,” he continued. “The proposition of this technology was to leverage the demand for digital services from our patients and healthcare providers.”
Most patient families prefer to schedule their own medical care, pay online and have personalized communication tools – the digital front door offers all that and seeks to optimize outpatient surgeries, he added.
“The digital transformation happened in four phases over two years,” Patel recalls. “Phase one was to increase adoption of the digital front door and its key functional capabilities, which consisted of functioning digital communications, online bill payments and medication refills. Having these services available was critical to increasing patient portal activation and encouraging users to use the portal effectively.
“Establishing a robust education/support structure for both physicians and patients should be a priority and established prior to implementation.”
Ravi Patel, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
“Phase two included creating online schedules for new patients seeking primary care and activating new and direct online schedules for specialty departments,” he continued. “This phase was specifically designed to address the desire for self-scheduling and aimed to further increase patient portal adoption and online bill payment.”
Phase three focused on integrating telehealth and making all these tools available in Spanish. Phase four prioritized the development of educational materials, asynchronous e-visits, and service restoration.
“Addressing our planning strategy and operational efficiency and optimizing our care flows with the patient portal and The digital front door alleviated the challenges we encountered with our limited access points to care at Lurie Children’s,” he reported.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
Ensuring that Lurie Children’s staff felt comfortable with the patient portal technology was an important part of ensuring this transition would be effective in meeting the challenge. The above-mentioned functionalities were the tools used by patients to effectively interact with staff as caregivers in various modalities.
RESULTS
One way Lurie Children’s monitors the success of the technology is by tracking patient portal usage. 91% of patients logged into their portal account within three months of meeting.
“We see that our patients are actively using the digital tools,” said Patel. “This increase is attributed to careful performance management of activation workflows, defined goals and a transparent and easily accessible monitoring dashboard for end users and managers. The increased use of patient portals is also attributed to a 65% decrease in patient encounters where portal activation codes were not available. offered or activated.
“Additionally, our online scheduling rate has increased tenfold since July 2020, from 0.1% to 14% as of October 2023,” he continued. “Lurie Children’s conducted a comprehensive decision tree project that uses logic to ensure the right patient is scheduled with the right provider at the right location, time, and method.”
These algorithms have greatly increased the ability to make and plan for ourselves Enhance the overall scheduling experience for families and patients, referring providers and other physicians at Lurie Children’s Hospital, he added. Decision trees have been critical to the success of online scheduling and have helped speed up appointment scheduling, he said.
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
“If any other organization is considering adopting a similar technology, establishing a robust education/support structure for both physicians and patients should be prioritized and established prior to implementation,” Patel advised.
“Finding a way to bridge the gap with teenage patients is also difficult,” he continued. “The legal restrictions within the state create challenges around proxy support/access and the rights of teens to access their own private health information. High portal activation and usage in a pediatric setting is difficult because you are dealing with two different levels of access and healthcare rights.”
Taking care of the legal component is a difficult obstacle to overcome, but should be considered if an institution is considering implementing a similar portal system, he added.
“Most importantly, addressing the unconscious biases is critical to promoting equity in access to the patient portal and thereby promoting equity in the various tools available to patients to use at their own preference to access access the health care they and their families need,” he concluded.
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