

Cleveland Clinic teamed with Epic to develop a home-monitoring program for COVID-19 patients.

Ten things to know:

1. The partners used Epic's MyChart Care Companion to monitor patients with chronic conditions and customized it for COVID-19. Patients complete questions about their symptoms daily so primary care teams can monitor their conditions and react quickly if patients worsen.

2. The tool also allows patients to engage with a member of their care team to manage their progress and recovery. Patients also can access education, condition-tracking and treatment information through the tool's app.

3. It typically requires three months to design and build technology before giving it to a patient, but the Cleveland Clinic and Epic teams were able to develop and implement the update in 10 days. They developed the COVID-19 questionnaires and integrated patient education to support the rapid response.

4. All patient information from the remote monitoring is stored in the EHR, and the system integrates population management tools to generate reports and a patient registry to track outreach and encounters with clinicians.

5. The program includes more than 1,200 lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients, and 900 more suspected cases have been referred. Patient engagement was 13 percent when the program began and has since grown to 20 percent.

6. Twenty-four patients with deteriorating symptoms have been admitted in the remote-monitoring program since it began.

7. Through the program, Cleveland Clinic identified that patients who need escalation typically experience worse symptoms by day eight, and shortness of breath is the most common symptom.

8. The partners have added screening questions about advance directives, anxiety and stress, depression, and coping as well as a function to express gratitude.

9. Cleveland Clinic specialty groups are using the tools, including the women's health team, which developed a COVID-19-positive registry for obstetric patients.

10. Cleveland Clinic plans to use the tools to support chronic care patients who have had care disruption due to the pandemic, and it may use the tools for research and predictive monitoring.

More articles on health IT:
51 Florida hospitals form COVID-19 data exchange: 4 things to know
Cerner falls but remains dominant alongside Epic for EHR market share




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