Top Health Systems Use Conversa To Handle Coronavirus Capacity Crisis
UCSF Health, Northwell Health, UNC Health And Other Systems Using Conversa’s Virtual Care And Communication Platform To Triage People In Their Communities, Manage Patients, And Screen Healthcare Workers
PORTLAND, Ore., March 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Conversa Health launched Coronavirus Health Chats last week, expanding virtual care to help people assess risk, stay safe, check symptoms, and triage to local testing and care resources. As the pandemic continues to escalate, Conversa has rolled out a comprehensive suite of COVID-19 programs developed with top clinicians—and CDC guidance—to help hospitals and health systems manage the outbreak: COVID-19 Screener & Triage, COVID-19 Lab Results, COVID-19 QuarantineChecks, and COVID-19 Employee HealthScreener.
Hospitals and health systems can be up and running with these programs in 48 hours. Interested organizations can get more information at coronavirushealthchats.com and you can try a demonstration by texting “Virus” to 83973.
“The pressing issue in this crisis is healthcare system capacity. Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed,” said Murray Brozinsky, CEO of Conversa Health. “There are two ways to address it—flatten the curve and add virtual capacity. Conversa’s automated virtual care and communication platform adds capacity. It keeps people out of the system who are not likely to have the coronavirus, directs those with likely exposure to the appropriate local resources, dispenses lab results and associated instructions, provides guidance for those in quarantine, and screens healthcare professionals and other employees so they are safe to work. We are helping people and the health system to stay connected without becoming infected.”
New York State hospitals are facing a crisis point, as they grapple with thousands of cases and try to overcome critical shortages. To help hospitals across the state, Northwell CEO Michael Dowling has been appointed to oversee New York’s hospital capacity council. “We appreciate Conversa’s speed and scale helping us with our system and patient contact center capacity,” said Holly Koehler, Vice President, Patient Access Services Northwell Health, New York State’s largest healthcare provider and private employer serving over 2 million patients. “While we already use Conversa effectively across Northwell, we are running their Coronavirus Lab Results program to communicate test results to patients and help them manage how they interact with the system or self-manage their situation.”
Consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationally, UCSF Health and its more than 24,000 employees serve the San Francisco Bay area, one of the first metro areas in the country to see the impact of COVID-19. “Conversa is a helpful tool in our virtual care strategy. As coronavirus spreads, we have an immediate mandate to screen our employees daily and to ensure that any who might be infected don’t come into contact with patients,” stated Aaron Neinstein, MD, Director of Clinical Informatics, UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation. “In just a few days, Conversa enabled us to develop and deploy an Employee Health Daily Digital Screening Tool for Coronavirus that fit well into our workflow and helps ensure our patients remain safe.”
“We have a great need to help our community better understand the coronavirus and COVID-19’s potential symptoms,” said Stephanie Turner, Interim Vice President of Population Health Services, UNC Health Alliance. “We also need to provide resources to patients if their condition worsens and effectively monitor them. Conversa’s patient engagement solution expands our virtual care and communication to help us meet the needs of our isolated and quarantined patients in an empathetic and efficient way.” UNC Health is one of only a handful of systems recognized as a “Most Wired Advanced” health system by the American Hospital Association (AHA) for its use of information technology to improve patient care and clinical integration.
Conversa’s Coronavirus Health Chats leverage the Conversa Virtual Health Platform™. The platform enables healthcare organizations to monitor, engage and manage their patients and communities across many use cases—including chronic care, acute discharge, perioperative, oncology, OBGYN, prevention and wellness—with a frequency and at a scale that would be prohibitive using just telemedicine, telephonic or in-person interactions with clinicians, nurses and health coaches.
“During these critical times, healthcare organizations are using our solution for its purpose-built intent: personalized, automated engagement at scale,” Brozinsky added. “We are uniquely blending augmented intelligence (AI), behavioral science and clinical expertise to help offload visits and calls so frontline healthcare workers can focus on the patients that need them most. If you are a healthcare organization looking for help handling the surge in your community—we are here, we are ready, and we are in this together.”
About Conversa Health
Conversa is healthcare’s leader in delivering personalized, automated engagement at scale for patients, members, employees, and consumers. With Conversa Connect™, its proprietary patient profiling and health signals engine, and an extensive library of clinically-intelligent engagement programs, Conversa enables healthcare organizations to effectively and efficiently manage patients across the care continuum. Leading health systems, payers, and pharma companies are using Conversa to develop meaningful relationships and drive better health outcomes at scale. To learn more, visit conversahealth.com, follow @ConversaHealth or text HELLO to 77877.