PATIENT EXPERIENCE
Vanderbilt Sees Near Tripling of Portal Traffic as Patients Seek Answers Amid Pandemic
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) already had a popular patient portal in place, long before the coronavirus crisis started. But once the public health emergency reared its head in Nashville, use of the system exploded.
On an average week, the institution might see 3,000 sign-ups for My Health at Vanderbilt; by mid-March, that number nearly tripled to almost 8,100. In the pediatrics population, enrollment increased more than sevenfold in one week to 1,500.
“It’s been amazing,” said Terrell Smith, R.N., MSN, senior director of patient and family engagement.
There are two major reasons for the recent surge, leaders believe. One is they’ve used the portal as patients’ entryway into telehealth services. Even before Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gave the shelter-in-place order, Vanderbilt began moving every care encounter that could not wait 3-6 months onto the web — from surgery follow-ups to diabetes management.
Plus, as it has started to administer thousands of COVID-19 tests, VUMC required individuals to access the portal to receive their results. Users are able to see them on the web immediately, accompanied by instructions on next steps, if they’re positive for the virus.
“If we didn’t have this, we would have tons of very anxious patients waiting for tests for a long period of time,” Smith said. “This is absolutely without question the very best tool we have for active patient and family engagement, and we are very fortunate that we had the infrastructure in place,” she added. “We’re never going to do business the same way again.”
Opening the Portal
Of course, VUMC did not simply open the virtual door to its portal and watch thousands of patients flood the system overnight. Rather, as COVID cases picked up in its service area, leaders enacted a series of policy changes to make it easier to join remotely while maintaining social distancing.
For instance, children with chronic diseases could not travel to the hospital to sign up for video visits in person, as VUMC required previously. Instead Vanderbilt is conducting introductory calls over video chat with kids and their guardians to assist in filling out new portal enrollment forms securely online. That sign-up service is now also available to adult and adolescent patients, said S. Trent Rosenbloom, M.D., an associate professor, pediatrician and director of the portal.
“Previously, we had a lot more steps, and a lot of it had to be in person,” he said.
It also helped that Vanderbilt has had some form of a patient portal since 2004 and undertook a wholesale revamp of the system recently. Numerous stakeholders were involved in the workgroup to devise this latest iteration — marketing, patient engagement, health IT and practicing physicians, just to name a few.
All came to a consensus around what goals they’d measure and how to reach them. Since the beginning, Vanderbilt instilled the importance of the system starting at orientation, with each team member encouraged to sign up as part of onboarding.
“Even if you don’t get your care at Vanderbilt, you need to be conversant about what’s in that portal,” Smith said.
What’s Next
One of its “reach goals” was to hit 568,000 users by June 1, but with the recent pandemic surge, it already blew past that number two months early. Prior to then, they used a myriad of campaigns to promote the portal, but Rosenbloom credits culture for the success more than any billboard or commercial.
“It’s not just marketing, though marketing is critical,” he said. “It involves culture change and having executive and front-line buy in and all of the processes in place. We really needed senior administrative endorsement of what we are doing.”
VUMC does not plan to rest on its laurels after hitting its ambitious goals early. They’ve been working for months on a Spanish-language version of My Health at Vanderbilt and are beginning to pilot it in one pediatric clinic. They’re also working on offering patients an early upfront estimate of how much their visit will cost, and Vanderbilt is running another pilot that incorporates OpenNotes into the system.
“We’ve got a long roadmap of other things we want to do, but right now we’re all focused on COVID,” Rosenbloom said.
For him, one key takeaway is to have your hospital’s patient portal fully integrated into how you deliver care before the next public health emergency.
“As an institution, it allows you to be nimble, to have a large cohort of patients at the outset and to have all of the infrastructure in place you need to pivot when an urgent need like this arises,” he said.
This article features interviews with:
S. Trent Rosenbloom, M.D.
Director, My Health at Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nashville, Tennessee
Terrell Smith
Senior Director of Patient and Family Engagement
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nashville, Tennessee
Image credits: istockphoto.com/ponsulak & istockphoto.com/eva katalin kondoros
