January 28, 2020

The sixth Cutting Edge of Pediatrics conference sponsored by the Department of Surgery was held January 25, providing 110 front-line pediatric practitioners an opportunity to learn how to treat surgical issues in the primary care setting and to know when to refer to a pediatric specialist.

From the first speaker to the last, Texas Children’s surgeons and pediatric providers from across the Houston area engaged in lively discussions of the topics, which included anesthesia, ethics, adolescent gynecology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, pediatric general surgery, plastic surgery and urology.

Following a welcome from Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Larry Hollier and Associate Chief of Clinical Affairs for the Department of Surgery and Chief of Pediatric Surgery Dr. Allen Milewicz, presenters included Drs. Daniel Curry, Robert Dempsey, Kelsie Morrison, Chimsom Oleka, Tiffany Raynor, James Riviello, Abhishek Seth, Vinitha Shenava and Shawn Stafford. Jodie Gonzalez with Bo’s Place led an ethics discussion on children and bereavement for the primary care provider.

“This is a great way for us to educate pediatricians, family practice physicians and advanced practice providers on specialized care in the primary care setting,” Hollier said. “We want to arm these front-line providers with knowledge they can use every day to provide the best care for their patients.”

If you missed the Cutting Edge of Pediatrics conference, you can click here to view all presentations given at the event. Many, if not all of the presentations, also will be posted on Texas Children’s Hospital: Medically Speaking, a series highlighting the latest advancements in medicine.

 

Today, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee announced the addition of Texas Children’s Hospital to the USOPC National Medical Network. Texas Children’s will serve as a national medical center and the Official Pediatric Medicine Provider, offering expertise to Team USA athletes in coordination with USOPC medical practitioners. Texas Children’s also has established a dedicated USOPC Technology and Innovation Endowment to provide additional support.

“Texas Children’s Hospital has a history of high-quality medical care and leadership and is an exceptional addition to the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s National Medical Network,” said Bahati VanPelt, USOPC chief of athlete services.

“Working with specialty providers represents a great opportunity for Team USA athletes to benefit from leading practitioners in sports medicine – and in this case specialized service for young athletes – as part of the broad USOPC commitment to whole-athlete wellness.”

The National Medical Network partners with leading medical centers and practitioners with proven sports medicine expertise to provide additional services to America’s elite athletes. Our partnership with the USOPC will allow for integration of Texas Children’s expertise into the USOPC’s Sports Medicine program.

“We are thrilled to support the USOPC and America’s elite athletes as the exclusive pediatric care provider of the National Medical Network,” said Dr. Jeffrey Shilt, Texas Children’s chief of community surgery and the sports medicine liaison to the USOPC.

“As young athletes transition from the playground with the goal of representing Team USA, we look forward to helping them achieve these milestones by providing expert care during an illness or injury, and maintaining their overall health and well-being. We take great pride in being able to support the next generation of Olympians and Paralympians as they optimize their health and performance through this world-class relationship.”

In addition to joining the National Medical Network, Texas Children’s committed additional resources to the USOPC’s Technology and Innovation Fund, which will specifically support investments in pediatric medical innovations and services. In conjunction with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation, and with support from generous investors, the fund was created to use the brightest ideas in technology and engineering to benefit Team USA’s sports and athletes.

The fund delivers groundbreaking improvements to current sport technology, drives future development and bridges the gap between innovation and utilization to put the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee – and the athletes and National Governing Bodies it serves – at the forefront of sport performance innovation.

“The USOPC is committed to leading in the fields of sport high performance and innovation, supporting Team USA athletes where they train and compete with cutting-edge research – and, importantly, the ability to translate research into best practices,” said Finbarr Kirwan, USOPC vice president, sport performance. “Texas Children’s support of the Tech and Innovation Fund dramatically increases our ability to build on our successes to date, and significantly expand our ability to provide for Team USA athletes of all ages.”

National Medical Network organizations are designated by the USOPC as either national or regional based on the scope of available services and specific geographic proximity to training and competition centers and sites.

The following organizations are members of the National Medical Network:

National Medical Centers

  • Steadman Philippon Research Institute and The Steadman Clinic – Vail, Colorado
  • Texas Children’s Hospital – Houston, Texas
  • University of Utah Health – Salt Lake City, Utah

Regional Medical Centers

  • Adirondack Health – Saranac Lake, New York
  • Allegheny Health Network – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Colorado Center of Orthopedic Excellence – Colorado Springs, Colorado
  • Lake Placid Sports Medicine – Lake Placid, New York
  • Memorial Health, part of UCHealth – Colorado Springs, Colorado
  • For more information on USOPC athlete care and the National Medical Network, visit TeamUSA.org

About the USOPC

Founded in 1894 and headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee serves as both the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States. The USOPC is focused on protecting, supporting and empowering America’s athletes, and is responsible for fielding U.S. teams for the Olympic, Paralympic, Youth Olympic, Pan American and Parapan American Games, and serving as the steward of the Olympic and Paralympic movements in the U.S. For more information, visit TeamUSA.org.

January 26, 2020

A new system will soon allow Texas Children’s Health Plan to better integrate data for an improved member and provider experience.

Epic Tapestry, a module within Epic health care management, will help make this possible by first providing better information and improved work processes for employees who treat our more than 400,000 customers.

With the launch of Epic Tapestry – set for February 1, 2021 – employees who must now use up to ten systems to do their job, will be able to use just one or two. They will have access to more information, need to ask fewer questions and will be better prepared to offer comprehensive service.

“This is going to be very exciting for our workforce, allowing us to be much more efficient in our processes and therefore better able to meet the needs of our members,” said Justin Loudon, assistant vice president at Texas Children’s Health Plan. “The promise for Epic’s impact is enormous and we are enthusiastic about what this means for our future.”

The Benefits of Epic Tapestry

Epic Tapestry is an overarching application that will replace a variety of applications currently used. Its goal is to integrate the business of Texas Children’s Health Plan. It will:

  • Ensure a comprehensive, integrated enterprise solution with a common look and feel
  • Reduce manual work and provide a better data source for information
  • Incorporate evidence-based decision-support tools and better data entry at point of care
  • Optimize the patient/family experience across the enterprise
  • Challenge current practice—streamline and simplify

Reinforcing One Amazing Team

Project leaders also note that the current applications used at Texas Children’s Health Plan have no integration or communication with applications used at Texas Children’s Hospital.

“This is something that has to change,” said John Turner, assistant vice president at The Health Plan. “Thousands of Health Plan members are also Texas Children’s Hospital or Texas Children’s Pediatrics patients. Many of our providers also work within both worlds. Introducing Epic at The Health Plan will ensure that all systems can talk to one another.”

Texas Children’s Hospital implemented Epic in 2008 and now it’s The Health Plan’s turn.

Money Saved = Increased Member Care

Loudon added that this implementation is also a cost savings measure as The Health Plan spends over $7 million each year on maintenance and hosting for all of its many applications. This annual cost will be significantly less once those applications are replaced by Epic.

Applications to be replaced include QNXT, Vital, Impact Pro, Maccess, Formworks, Harmony/WellSky, Member Portal, Provider Portal, MicroDyn and Altegra. Once full implementation takes place, only Epic and Onbase will be in use.

Employees will be trained for the change

All essential groups will be trained beginning in October of this year. Watch Connect for a separate story on training details.

Want to know more?

All employees, providers and members who are affected will receive targeted communications from a variety of sources, including: managers, supervisors and corporate communications.

January 14, 2020

Rhonda Lanclos shares how spending time on enjoyable hobbies, like art, has helped enhance her health and well-being so she can better care for her patients and their families at Texas Children’s. Read more

January 13, 2020

Texas Children’s Health Plan has long been focused on improving its operations in many ways. At the top of the list is establishing and maintaining good relationships with our providers.

“When providers are happy, members are happy,” said Anna Mateja, vice president at The Health Plan. “It’s an understatement to say that we value providers. They are absolutely essential to the care of our members and families.”

So to that end, meeting the needs of nearly 12,000 physicians and specialists, has become high priority. Among efforts to address this priority was the recent establishment of the Strike Team, a team of four employees solely focused on trouble shooting and customer service.

“Our team ensures that concerns are addressed in a timely way, underlying issues are resolved and overall quality service is delivered to our providers,” said Jennifer Sima, senior decision support analyst who project manages for the group. Strike Team members are Nekia Grays, senior provider relations representative; Christopher Sam, senior claims examiner; Imani Phillips Spears, operations systems analyst II, and DaShawn Wilson, senior provider relations representative. The formation of this special team has required that these employees temporarily step out of their every day roles and take on this special task.

When first commissioned, the group was faced with a backlog of more than 3,043 issues. The combined effort of the Strike Team and multiple departments helped to reduce the targeted backlog to 390 within just a few months. Their work is ongoing and their value to The Health Plan increases each day.

Sima adds that she is incredibly proud of the Strike Team’s progress. She emphasizes that their success has come largely at the hands of collaboration and cooperation with normal operations; including provider relations, claims processing and member services. “The Strike Team is definitely part of our One Amazing Team.”

An overarching theme at The Health Plan is customer obsession. In an effort to become more customer obsessed, there are several projects taking place.

Just a few of these are:

  • The implementation of Epic Tapestry, a core claims processing system for managed care organizations that will provide integration across the Texas Children’s system and eliminate the need for multiple databases and duplication of many processes.
  • Streamlining the onboarding process for new providers which will make it easier and faster to join the Health Plan network.
  • A brand new claims processing dashboard project that provides real-time information on how we are managing claims.
  • Customer service training from the Patient Experience department for our Member Services and Provider Services call center employees.

For more information about the Strike Team’s work, please contact Jennifer Sima at jxsima@texaschildrens.org.

January 6, 2020

Physicians from across the globe traveled to Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women last week to attend Texas Children’s first Fetal Center Fetoscopic Neural Tube Defect Simulation Course. Teams from Australia, England, Belgium, Turkey, Germany, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and the USA were here to learn how to perform a specific fetal surgery procedure developed at Texas Children’s.

The two-day program included lectures and hands-on practice sessions with various experts in the field, including Texas Children’s Obstetrician and Gynecologist-in-Chief Dr. Michael Belfort and Pediatric Neurosurgeon Dr. William Whitehead. Whitehead and Belfort pioneered two-port fetoscopic neural tube repair surgery in 2014 when they performed the minimally-invasive procedure in–utero on 23-week-old Grayson Canezero.

Since then, Texas Children’s has become one of the only places in the world where people can go to correct neural tube defects, also known as spina bifida defects, fetoscopically. Advances in fetal surgery and the landmark clinical trial, known as the Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS Trial), have proven that a fetal surgical repair leads to decreased rates of hydrocephalus and improved leg function compared to a postnatal repair.

Through their research and outcomes data, Belfort and his team have shown that performing the surgery fetoscopically yields the same outcome for the baby as the open repair, while being significantly less invasive for the mother. Texas Children’s continues to offer open fetal surgery for spina bifida, the standard of care since 2012, for patients who do not qualify for or opt not to undergo a fetoscopic repair.

Conference attendees learned how to select patients for the surgery, counsel and prepare them for the surgery, perform the surgery, manage patients after the surgery and follow-up after the child is delivered. The conference included several hands-on simulations of the procedure and other related surgeries.

“This is a great way to educate and equip surgeons all over the world with the knowledge and ability to perform a procedure that can make a huge difference in the lives of mothers and their unborn babies,” Belfort said. “I am very pleased we were able to provide this opportunity and I am especially grateful to our wonderful Texas Children’s team members who organized and managed the course and to Karl Storz who provided the equipment that made this possible.”

December 23, 2019

Since launching the Texas Children’s Patient Access Initiative, the organization continues to make great strides to ensure patients easily and conveniently get in the door to access our high quality services.

Due to the tremendous dedication of our faculty, staff and the collaborative solutions implemented over the last year, the organization has exceeded its FY19 P3 goal for patient access. While Texas Children’s targeted goal for Access to Care was to reach at least 686,280 provider completed appointments across the system, the organization exceeded that goal with nearly 692,000 appointments, equating to more than 5,000 additional provider completed appointments than originally anticipated.

“This impressive milestone reflects our commitment to improving access and the overall experience for every patient and family that comes to Texas Children’s for care,” said Senior Vice President and Patient Access Leader Richelle Fleischer. “It’s amazing to see how much we have accomplished on patient access in a relatively short period of time through our collaborative efforts. It has truly been a team effort.”

One of the many impactful changes benefiting patient families has been their ability to easily and quickly schedule their appointments online. To date, a total of 38,012 appointments have been scheduled online via MyChart and DocASAP.

In May 2018, Texas Children’s launched direct scheduling that allows current patients to schedule return appointments online through MyChart. Since its implementation, 31,246 visits have been scheduled online and many patients and their families describe the scheduling process as “easy and convenient.”

In addition to direct scheduling via MyChart, over 6,766 appointments have been made via DocASAP, Texas Children’s online scheduling partner. Offered in both English and Spanish, this online scheduling tool is available to new patients, current patients and referred patients at Texas Children’s three hospital campuses including our specialty care locations in Houston and Austin, and Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women.

Other patient access milestones

Texas Children’s implemented other enhancements to improve patient access across the system. Below is an update on where we are today:

  • MyChart activations: Texas Children’s continues to see improvement in the number of patients signing up for MyChart. In October 2017, the organization had approximately 61 percent of distinct patients sign up for MyChart. As a result of system wide efforts to raise patient awareness and engagement, we have now exceeded 72 percent activation rate for MyChart throughout the system as of November 2019.
  • Electronic Waitlist: Since implementing this MyChart feature that automatically sends texts and email notifications when appointments become available sooner, 6,508 patients accepted an appointment on average 22 days earlier than their prior appointment. The total patient volume includes Texas Children’s Pediatrics (TCP) including our Austin and College Station locations, all subspecialties, sleep studies and therapies.
  • Reminder texts: In October 2019, Texas Children’s hit a record low no-show rate of 9.7 percent for provider completed appointments. With the upcoming migration of mobile numbers of almost 10,000 patients from the “home” field to “mobile” fields, these patients will be automatically opted into text message reminders, further scaling the impact of the 7-3-1 messaging strategy where patients can confirm or cancel an appointment via text message at seven days, with additional 3-day and 1-day reminders prior to the appointment day.
  • Space Sharing: In September 2018, Texas Children’s launched a pilot program to explore clinical space sharing between specialty clinics in Wallace Tower. This initiative has helped the organization identify underused or vacant spaces that can be used by clinics in need of additional space for appointments. Since go-live, 27 requests have been approved which translates to 292 completed patient appointments.
What’s next for patient access?

For FY20, Texas Children’s Patient Access Steering Committee will launch Access 3.0 with initiatives targeting three new areas of focus that will build upon the organization’s Access 1.0 and 2.0 successes.

  • Provider expansion – New teams will investigate opportunities for digital scribes and broaden the scope of the Space Utilization tools to Texas Children’s West Campus and The Woodlands.
  • MyChart Patient Optimization – Renewed focus will continue on Online Scheduling via MyChart to ensure the door remains open for patients to book appointments online for any Texas Children’s subspecialty clinic, not just those in which they are returning patients. In collaboration with the Online Scheduling workgroup, the All-In team launched Pre- at TCP’s and Women’s Services areas and will go live with this feature at all TCH Ambulatory Clinics.
  • Template Consistency – To maintain and enhance ambulatory capacity improvements from our Patient Access 1.0 and 2.0 initiatives, a team will be working throughout the new fiscal year to ensure template consistency within and across services.

In addition to these areas, Access 3.0 will support the work of our E-Health and Referrals teams.

Want to learn more about patient access efforts? Click here to view our Resource Page.