Providence: Remote Monitoring Offers Lifeline for COVID-19 Patients

This week I was honored to be part of a webinar with our clinical partners from Providence sharing how they moved at rapid pace to implement remote patient monitoring for COVID-19 patients. I entered health care after nearly two decades in telecom to try to make a difference, and I had no idea this is what we would be facing just a few years after I made the switch. My congratulations and thank you to Dr. Hargobind Khurana, medical director of Telehealth Acute Care, and Sherene Schlegel, executive director, Telehealth Clinical Operations at Providence for what they and their front line clinical, IT and telehealth teams have achieved. 

As COVID-19 has taken center stage across most of this country, Xealth had a unique vantage point early on. Being based in Seattle gave a front seat in the first US city to experience this pandemic. With us has been Providence, which treated the country’s first case. Quickly, Providence realized that it needed to find a way to keep tabs on patients without everyone flooding their nearest hospital.

We have all heard the calls to stay home to flatten the curve and many people are nervous to go out in public, anyways. That combined with COVID-19’s common symptoms have created justifiable concern from patients and healthcare workers that a cough may not be just a cough. If everyone with those fears visited the ER, hospitals would quickly become overfilled and the spread of the virus would be worse.

Providence contacted Xealth and Twistle to find a way to remotely monitor patients suffering from COVID-19 symptoms using Xealth’s digital health platform to deliver Twistle’s care pathways and remote patient monitoring platform. Within 3 days, this solution was developed and live.

Providence doctors and nurses can prescribe Twistle to patients along with thermometers and pulse oximeters. Twistle then reaches out automatically to at-risk patients via secure messaging or phone to gather information about symptoms and device readings and send alerts to their care team, if needed. This program protects and relieves overburdened healthcare workers while also giving patients peace of mind and a safety net for communication while they recover at home. Xealth is providing the underlying platform for automation and integration into Providence’s EHR workflow, so medical providers have this information in one, holistic patient view for prescribing & monitoring Twistle and device usage amongst patients.

More than 1,000 positive or presumptive positive COVID-19 patients are already being helped with this solution at home, keeping patients safe and preventing additional stress on hospitals, emergency rooms and front-line healthcare teams. Incorporating remote monitoring into clinical operations extends the reach of front-line caregivers, monitoring patients effectively and efficiently while keeping them safely at home. Providence easily assumed this reduced 100+ ED visits in the first week, as well as reducing the patient anxiety in knowing they were being remotely monitored.

Xealth’s core value is that we can help health systems rapidly onboard new digital tools and extend the care teams’ ability to monitor and treat patients within current EHR workflows regardless of the patient’s location. In addition to COVID-19 response initiatives, there’s an increased need of digitally engaging patients across all conditions: diabetes, mental health, maternity, PT rehab, telehealth, etc.  We have been working diligently, especially during these unprecedented times, to assist our partner health systems across the country.

The curve will not flatten without giving patients the solutions to receive care no matter of location. The work Providence is doing can inform strategies for handling COVID-19 in other areas around the country.

To hear more details about how Providence is using digital health technology to monitor at risk and diagnosed COVID-19 patients at home, watch/download the hour long presentation: HERE