How Geisinger Uses Telehealth To Keep Patients At Home And Out of The Hospital

An executive at its Center for Telehealth explains how the Pennsylvania health system evaluates virtual care models – and when it knows it's time for an ER visit instead.

Geisinger Health, based in Danville, Pennsylvania, embarked on a telehealth journey to develop a single solution that could bring care closer to home for patients across the care continuum.

Geisinger evolved its telehealth program for its patients and its health plan members, and then leveraged this program to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The telehealth program now offers more than 70 specialties, including neurology, pulmonology, dentistry, behavioral health and others. It connects patients to a local physician, urgent care or primary care clinic, or a regional hospital.

Telehealth models for in-home care

At his HIMSS21 educational session, "Providing Care Closer to Home," David A. Fletcher, associate vice president of the Center for Telehealth at Geisinger, will explain how an executive evaluates telehealth models that can be used for in-home care, even for patients with complex health needs.

"At Geisinger, we have multiple approaches to evaluating telehealth models for in-home care," he said. "We work with our clinicians to demo the product to ensure that it meets criteria, such as providing clinically useful data, ease of use for the providers and support staff, and ready integration with the EHR and existing patient records.

"Additionally, we work with our IT staff to ensure the model meets our information security requirements and can be supported in the long term," he continued. "We also work with our frontline staff and pilot the product with patients, then survey them to ensure they find it useful, easy to use, and would recommend its usage going forward."

The staff works with their Institute for Innovation to ensure the product is best in class or competitive with other solutions on the market and to evaluate the outcomes for the population, and uses the new model to determine if it is beneficial and its use should be continued, he added.