Throughout the pandemic, our teams have adjusted and adapted quickly to the changing landscape of patient care. Rapidly standing up telemedicine operations provided an opportunity for us to offer our world-class care in a safe manner to our patients. Even as we return to more regular operations and in-person patient care, telemedicine remains a valuable option for many.
In our last fiscal year, 12% of our outpatient specialty appointments were completed via telemedicine and over 225,000 appointments across the hospital, TCP/UC and the Centers were completed via video. And many other areas of the organization have adopted video workflows as a vital component of their care.
In mid-April, we will retire the current system, VidyoConnect, and migrate to the native Epic video client. Providers and patients can expect a similar experience with Epic and the familiar workflow of clicking on the green camera icon within an encounter will remain unchanged. Some workflows, such as adding a video interpreter to the visit, will change slightly.
“Moving this service to a trusted partner in Epic provides benefits we can pass along to our providers and patients,” said Dr. Robert Ball, medical director of eHealth. “They will deliver a level of customer service we expect to help us react quickly to questions and challenges, as well as provide more opportunities to develop new functionality and enhancements.”
In the coming weeks, updates and training materials will be available to help users get familiar with the system before launch. Similar education will be extended to patients and their families.
If you have any questions about this migration, please contact Dr. Robert Ball, Grace Karon or Paul Zuniga. You can also call 832-822-0220 or email ehealthsupport@texaschildrens.org, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Please refer to the eHealth SharePoint site for the latest in news about the migration.