Improving Telehealth Functions in a Mobile Clinic

Abstract

Problem: During the COVID-19 Pandemic, it became apparent that the use of telehealth was necessary in order to provide care for the patients at a mobile clinic. There was a previous failed attempt to implement telehealth using AdvancedMD (Perez, 2016), a HIPAA compliant telehealth platform. As a result, 100% of telehealth appointments were occurring on WhatsApp (McMorrow, 2018). The mobile clinic was under-utilizing telehealth functions and capabilities available through AdvancedMD. Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to optimize utilization of the telehealth capacity at the mobile clinic via AdvancedMD through the implementation of a telehealth guideline/toolkit. Methods: The telehealth toolkit/ guideline includes (1) Appointing a telehealth champion; (2) Establishing IT support via AdvancedMD IT; (3) Staff education on telehealth toolkit, and AdvancedMD training by the project lead; (4) Patient education and introduction to AdvancedMD by the mobile clinic staff; (5) Formal discontinuation of WhatsApp use for telehealth visits; and (6) Data tracking to support sustainability. Results: A telehealth champion was successfully appointed. One hundred percent of the mobile clinic staff education was completed. There were zero IT requests during AdvancedMD implementation, and use. During implementation, the weekly percentages of patient education completed were 0%, 55%, 50%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 87.5%, and 100% respectively. The weekly percentages of the AdvancedMD utilization were 0%, 11%, 50%, 100%, 85.7%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, and 100% respectively. Conclusions: Findings suggest successful implementation of the toolkit. This telehealth toolkit/ guideline yielded a successful implementation of the AdvancedMD telehealth module. The project’s success reflects the evidence found in the literature.