The Covid-19 pandemic required rapid scale of telemedicine as well as other digital workflows to maintain access to care while reducing infection risk. Both patients and clinicians who hadn't used telemedicine before were suddenly faced with a multi-step setup process to log into a virtual meeting. Unlike in-person examination rooms, locking a virtual meeting room was more error-prone and posed a risk of multiple patients joining the same online session.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic posed significant challenges to clinicians practicing in outpatient settings focused on chronic disease treatment and management. Many interprofessional teams transitioned to telehealth to continue to provide care while minimizing in-person interaction to reduce risk of transmission. Given that telehealth will likely remain as a care option even as the pandemic subsides, this review summarizes the applied recommendations on telehealth in interprofessional patient care, provides practical insights for successfully transitioning care from an academic medical center bariatric surgery program, and highlights future opportunities for research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health emergency necessitated changes in health care delivery that will have lasting implications. The University of Pennsylvania Health System is a large multihospital system with an academic medical center at its core. To continue to care for patients with and without COVID-19, the system had to rapidly deploy telemedicine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence strongly supports that access to specialty gastroenterology or hepatology care in cirrhosis is associated with higher adherence to guideline-recommended care and improves clinical outcomes. Presently, only about one half of acute care hospitalizations for cirrhosis-related complications result in inpatient specialty care, and the current hepatology workforce cannot meet the demand of patients with liver disease nationwide, particularly in less densely populated areas and in community-based practices not affiliated with academic centers. Telemedicine, defined as the delivery of health care services at a distance using electronic means for diagnosis and treatment, holds tremendous promise to increase access to broadly specialty care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF