Implementation of telemedicine
In response to state and federal guidance related to the COVID-19
pandemic, and utilizing social distancing measures adopted in our
region, we transitioned to the use of telemedicine visits for all
outpatient pulmonary care beginning March 24, 2020. Prior to the
pandemic, our practice offered no telemedicine services and thus
procedures needed to be developed using the EPIC electronic health
record system, which had been used for clinical documentation by the
division for over 10 years. Specific templates for documentation were
developed for various visit types by our telemedicine task force.
Providers were trained to perform telemedicine visits through job aids
created by the telemedicine task force. Providers conducted telemedicine
video visits through the EHR application on their hospital-issued iPhone
or iPad, and patients were provided instructions to download and log
onto the associated patient portal application.