Wake Forest Baptist Health urologists have created a toolkit to help other health organizations rapidly introduce telemedicine as an alternative option for care during the COVID-19 crisis.
The group report their experience in an "article in press" appearing on the Journal of the American College of Surgeons website ahead of print.
Stay-at-home orders caught many medical practices and health care systems off guard, leaving them ill-equipped to rapidly adopt an efficient telemedicine platform so they could keep providing time-sensitive care to non-COVID-19 patients.
The toolkit enabled the team to convert all in-person visits to telemedicine in three days, according to lead author Catherine Matthews, M.D., professor of urology and gynecology, at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.
The toolkit uses a common electronic medical record (EMR) system, Epic, and widely available video portals like Google Duo and Doximity, to overcome social distancing edicts. The toolkit relies on eight essential elements readily available in any medical organization new to telemedicine. "One of our motivations for preparing the toolkit was to make it instantly available to any type of organization, large or small, that has an electronic medical record system," said Matthews.
Read the full release from the College of Surgeons.
Media Contacts
Bonnie Davis, bdavis@wakehealth.edu