• Health Tech

Virtual urgent care, online monitoring: How CHOP’s e-health team coped with surge

January 16, 2023

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has been grappling with the surge of pediatric respiratory illnesses, including respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and COVID-19 – a condition described by some public health professionals as a “tripledemic.”. 

In response, CHOP’s health IT team has been implementing various strategies to manage the influx of patients, including virtual urgent care and remote patient monitoring. Becker’s recently interviewed Shakeeb Akhter, the CIO and Senior Vice President of CHOP, to gain insights into their IT department’s response to the surge. Here are the key highlights from the interview:

• CHOP has been utilizing analytics tools to predict and share wait times across their emergency departments. They have also rapidly increased bed capacity, relocated their urgent care center, and implemented functionality that allows patients to notify the hospital when they are en route to an urgent care facility, saving a spot prior to arrival. Additionally, CHOP is exploring telehealth options to support the surge in viral cases.

• The virtual urgent care program offers video visits as an alternative for low-acuity patients, reducing wait times. Eligibility and appropriateness for urgent care video visits are determined using an online pediatric symptom checker. Furthermore, to create capacity for severe respiratory illness cases, CHOP is expediting plans to discharge suitable patients with ambulatory monitoring through remote patient monitoring (RPM). They are launching new RPM programs using a combination of in-house electronic health record tools and third-party solutions, targeting various use cases such as NICU patients, malnutrition, concussion management, pediatric epilepsy, newborn anticipatory guidance, post-surgical care, and more.

• CHOP’s health IT team has learned valuable lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic that they are applying to the current surge of respiratory illnesses. They actively participate in a daily enterprise taskforce call, which provides situational awareness and informs their strategies to address clinical and operational challenges. The team’s approach involves close collaboration with clinical and operational teams, deploying multidisciplinary IT product teams, adopting design thinking principles to develop user-centric clinical workflows in partnership with clinical informaticists, and working in an agile manner to quickly prioritize and respond to new ideas.

These initiatives undertaken by CHOP’s health IT team demonstrate their proactive and adaptive approach in managing the surge of pediatric respiratory illnesses. By leveraging technology and innovative solutions, they aim to optimize patient care and alleviate the strain on their facilities during this challenging period.