scholarly journals Internet triage of 9,498 outpatients daily in the time of COVID-19: Experiences of the largest public hospital in Taiwan (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ding-Heng Lu ◽  
Chia-An Hsu ◽  
Eunice J. Yuan ◽  
Jun-Jeng Fen ◽  
Chung-Yuan Lee ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND During pandemics, acquiring outpatients’ travel, occupation, contact and cluster history is one of the most important measures to assess the risk of the incoming patient. Previous means to acquire the information at the examination room was insufficient to block the spread of the disease. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to demonstrate the deployment of an automatic triage system to triage outpatients through internet. METHODS An automatic system incorporated to the operating online registration form of the hospital was deployed along with its on-site counterpart. Automatic query to the VPN travel and contact history database with the patient’s National ID number was made for each attempt to acquire the patient’s travel and contact history. Patients with relevant histories were denied registration or entry. Text messages were sent to patients without relevant history for the expedited route of entry if applicable. RESULTS A total of 127857 visits was recorded. Among all visits, 91195 of them were registered online. Seventy-one-thousand, eight-hundred and sixteen of them received text messages for expedited route of entry. Sixty-five patients had relevant histories revealed by the VPN database and were denied of registration or entry. CONCLUSIONS An automatic system to acquire outpatients’ relevant travel and contact histories was deployed rapidly in one of the largest academic medical centers in Taiwan. The updated system successfully denied patients with relevant travel or contact histories to enter the hospital without forming long lines. Further efforts could be made to integrate the system with the electronic medical record system.

Author(s):  
Megan M Cory ◽  
Wasif A Osmani ◽  
Kevin S Cory ◽  
Staci Young ◽  
Rebecca Lundh

Objective As appointments become more rushed, it is crucial that primary care clinicians consider new and effective ways to provide preventive health education to patients. Currently, patient education is often handouts printed from the electronic medical record system; however, these pieces of paper often do not have the desired impact. Well-established advertising methods reveal that repeated exposure is key in recall and swaying consumer decisions. The Creating Health Education for Constructive Knowledge in Underserved Populations (CHECK UP) Program is a medical student-led program that aims to improve patient recall of health information, health promoting behaviors and health outcomes by applying modified advertising concepts to the delivery of health education. Methods Patients were given large magnets containing health education information. These patients were interviewed 3–4 months afterwards to assess use and effectiveness of magnets as a means to provide health education. Results In total, 25 of the 28 patients given CHECK UP magnets agreed to participate. The majority of participants (23/25) kept the magnets and reported that they, as well as others in their households, see the magnets daily. All 23 participants recalled at least 1 health tip from 1 of the magnets. Conclusions The use of non-traditional materials for patient education allowed for repeated exposure and recall of health information. Consideration for modified use of evidence-based advertising and marketing strategies for the delivery of patient education may be an easy and effective way to provide information to patients outside of the clinical setting and promote health behavioral changes.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 749
Author(s):  
Gumpili Sai Prashanthi ◽  
Nareen Molugu ◽  
Priyanka Kammari ◽  
Ranganath Vadapalli ◽  
Anthony Vipin Das

India is home to 1.3 billion people. The geography and the magnitude of the population present unique challenges in the delivery of healthcare services. The implementation of electronic health records and tools for conducting predictive modeling enables opportunities to explore time series data like patient inflow to the hospital. This study aims to analyze expected outpatient visits to the tertiary eyecare network in India using datasets from a domestically developed electronic medical record system (eyeSmart™) implemented across a large multitier ophthalmology network in India. Demographic information of 3,384,157 patient visits was obtained from eyeSmart EMR from August 2010 to December 2017 across the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute network. Age, gender, date of visit and time status of the patients were selected for analysis. The datapoints for each parameter from the patient visits were modeled using the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) modeling. SARIMA (0,0,1)(0,1,7)7 provided the best fit for predicting total outpatient visits. This study describes the prediction method of forecasting outpatient visits to a large eyecare network in India. The results of our model hold the potential to be used to support the decisions of resource planning in the delivery of eyecare services to patients.


Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (Suppl_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Macaela N Rudeck ◽  
Catherine P Benziger

Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF) and flutter lead to increased risk of thromboembolism (TE). The CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc score is used to determine the risk of TE. Objective: We aim to evaluate the anticoagulation use across CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc scores calculated using a validated automatic calculator. Methods: An AF registry was created for patients with AF or atrial flutter who had seen a primary care or cardiology provider within the past 2 years (5/28/2018-5/28/2020). An automatic CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc calculator was integrated into the electronic medical record system at Essentia Health on 10/1/2019. High-risk of TE was defined as a score of ≥3 for females and a score of ≥2 for males. AF registry included demographics, anticoagulation prescription, CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc and ATRIA bleed score, contraindications, and presence of left atrial appendage (LAA) occlusion device. Results: A total of 10992 patients with AF or atrial flutter were included in the registry (74.8 ±11.8 years, 41.7% female). A total of 6703 (61.0%) had a CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc score calculated (mean score 3.9 ± 1.5). Mean ATRIA bleed score was 3.0 ± 2.0. Within these patients, 90.7% of males and 93.0% of females were at high-risk of TE. Of these high-risk patients, anticoagulation use was 82.7% for females and 83.5% for males and increased with increasing score (p<0.01 for males, p<0.01 for females) (Figure 1). Overall, 36.9% were prescribed NOAC, 47.0% warfarin, and 0.8% heparin. There was no sex difference in the prescription of NOAC (37.7% male vs. 35.9% female, p=0.1). Fewer than 1% had WATCHMAN LAA device (0.3% male vs. 0.4% female, p=0.5). Conclusion: Four out of 5 patients at increased risk of TE are prescribed an anticoagulant. Interventions to improve anticoagulation use in high-risk patients are needed. Figure 1. Anticoagulation prescription use in atrial fibrillation patients by CHA 2 DS 2 -VASc score and sex between 5/28/2018-5/28/2020 at Essentia Health (N=6703).


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