Geisinger saves $560K in pilot integrating video visits into Epic MyChart

Launching telemedicine from within the patient portal – which enables the health system to get electronic signoff on certain documents – is a big boon for compliance and efficiency.

Over the course of the pandemic, demand for behavioral health services increased dramatically in the communities served by Geisinger, the Danville, Pennsylvania-based health system. With a large patient population in rural areas, Geisinger expanded its use of telemedicine to scale access and leverage a national workforce to serve them.

Today, Geisinger Behavioral Health serves more than 45,000 unique patients annually, with more than 80% of services offered via telemedicine.

While telemedicine created access, challenges related to pre-visit readiness remained a problem. For example, delivering patient questionnaires and collecting signatures on documents such as consents was challenging when patients did not come to an office.

This was largely because telemedicine visits were not embedded in the patient portal, MyChart from Geisinger's EHR vendor Epic, said Benjamin C. Gonzales, operations manager II, virtual care, behavioral health, at Geisinger.

"Many of the pre-visit requirements, such as signing certain consents and completion of certain health screeners, had both regulatory and quality implications when not completed," he explained. "Geisinger needed a way of integrating these required steps into the video visit itself to maintain compliance, enable pre-visit readiness, and mirror the information captured prior to in-person encounters."

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