Jennifer Junis and John Wozenilek on the ATA panel
At a recent national conference in Phoenix, telehealth stakeholders detailed how digital care needs are evolving as providers move toward more long-term, integrated and personalized digital care.
Peoria, Illinois-based OSF HealthCare continues to expand its digital transformation by continuing to invest in research and core technologies while creating an omnichannel experience for patients, a transformation that was highlighted in a spotlight presentation at a conference hosted by the American Telehealth Association (ATA).
Jennifer Junius RN, MSN, senior vice president of OSF OnCall Digital Health, and John Vozenilek MD, chief medical officer of Innovation & Digital Health for OSF HealthCare, emphasized that standardization, investments in infrastructure and security, and collaboration with community partners and across departments are essential to providing seamless care.
OSF laid the early foundations for digital care with a virtual ICU attached to OSF HealthCare's innovation space, the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center, and Dr. Vozenilek said the need during the COVID pandemic rapidly accelerated long-term plans for digital transformation.
“We then built a system of care tools and technology that now includes over 800 mission partners (employees) on OSF OnCall,” added Dr. Vozenilek. “Through the innovation process, we took our creativity and put it into action, and that action is now realized in the care we provide through OSF OnCall.”
Junis emphasized the importance of developing guiding principles for the new model of care: Establishing a single point of contact to ensure patients can seamlessly receive the care they need was a major priority in OSF OnCall's guiding principles.
Today, OSF OnCall has multiple clinically integrated programs to care for patients 24/7.
Junis explained his vision: “We wanted to create a self-service tool where every other industry is heading. We wanted to put patient care in the patients' own hands by being transparent. We wanted to be proactive.”
Other guiding principles: “We want to use data, innovation and intelligence to reach patients when they need something, even before they know they need it,” Junis said. “And we want to empower our clinicians and employees with the right tools, the right technology, at the right time, so patients can get care where they want, how they want it.”
Another benefit of an integrated digital health approach is that it allows OSF HealthCare to better manage capacity. OSF OnCall is focused on three distinct initiatives: digital experience (enabling patients to contact them in a way that works for them), digital care (including new models like virtual hospitalists, hospital-at-home or using mobile solutions to connect people to their care teams), and on-demand services (walk-in and virtual urgent care).
OSF HealthCare is also exploring strategies to enhance care delivery, such as leveraging artificial intelligence in medical technology and predictive analytics, using mobile clinics and digital health navigators, and centralizing processes such as data and analytics for care management.
For example, during a presentation on the main stage at ATA, Brandi Clark, vice president of digital care at OSF OnCall, said integrating easy-to-use digital tools can transform the patient experience.
“We are very focused on the end-to-end patient experience and how patients experience us from the front end of our website. So Aniq (from our partner Fabric Health) mentioned the AI-driven chatbot (Clare) that we use at OSF. This is a great example of how technology is transforming the patient experience and allowing caregivers to focus where the patient needs them.”
Clark said OSF is continually evaluating its existing technology partnerships to see if there are alternatives that could provide more value, and collaborations are focused on a small number of select partners who would mutually benefit from helping startups build products using data and insights from the health care system.
Clark emphasized that clinical efficiency in telehealth is crucial, so the pilot will prioritize clinician engagement and regular feedback loops while testing new technologies and workflows. He stressed that while digital tools can help clinicians be more efficient and make more informed decisions, they can't replace clinicians. Using tools to help healthcare workers do their jobs more efficiently is what Clark called “the secret sauce.”
For more information about OSF OnCall and OSF Innovation, please click here.
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