Defining Telehealth

Telehealth uses audio, video, and other types of technology to provide care to patients at a distance. While each telehealth use case addresses a specific clinical need, telehealth as a whole provides a wide range of benefits to patients, providers, and staff, including:

• Increasing access to care

• Facilitating care between hospitals, outpatient care sites, and the patient’s home

• Making care more convenient for patients and providers

• Improving disease management and health outcomes

• Reducing the overall cost of care

MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center (MTIC) Overview

The MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center (MTIC) was established in March 2017 by MedStar Health President and Chief Executive Officer Kenneth A. Samet, FACHE, with the goal of supporting and coordinating telehealth activities across MedStar Health’s Distributed Care Delivery Network. MTIC is housed within the MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2), and partners with clinical service lines and business entities that are interested in establishing and scaling telehealth throughout their practices.

MTIC is a system-wide resource that provides telehealth infrastructure, best practices, subject matter expertise, project implementation, and programmatic operational support. The Center was established in response to requests from clinicians across MedStar Health for expanded telehealth capabilities, and in recognition of the increasing role of telehealth in care delivery across the nation. The formal establishment of this center is a natural step on MedStar Health’s trajectory to becoming a fully connected healthcare system.

As examples, key areas that MTIC has supported since its launch include:

• MedStar eVisit: The platform offers patients on-demand urgent care by video. The expansion of this telehealth service played a critical role in MedStar Health’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about this expansion in our Case Studies section.

• MedStar Health Video Visits: Patients can schedule video appointments with primary care and specialty providers, and this platform was built and launched at scale within days during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about this rapid scaling in our Case Studies section.

• MedStar eConsults: These offerings pertain to inpatient and facility-based telehealth, enabling provider-to-provider, provider-to-patient, and patient-to-family connections.

• MedStar Health Emergency Department TeleTriage: This program first allowed attending physicians in a command center to provide remote triage to eligible patients in the emergency department via video. Read our Case Study to learn more about its history and how it was reinvented during the COVID-19 pandemic to become the MedStar Acute Care Coordinating Center (MAC3) and make an even greater difference.

• Behavioral Health: Telehealth offerings also transformed behavioral healthcare delivery during the pandemic. Read our Case Study for this story and perspectives on how telehealth will help shape the service line’s future.

• TeleStroke: This system-wide program allows emergency departments to connect to vascular neurologists for acute stroke consults 24/7.

• Transplant eClinic: These multidisciplinary appointments connect patients at a MedStar Health location convenient for them to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital transplant specialists, surgeons, financial counselors, social workers, and others virtually.

• Post-Operative Virtual Visits: This program enables surgeons to schedule video-based follow-up visits with patients after surgery, allowing patients to recover at home.

Looking ahead, MTIC is also in a continual state of exploration when it comes to new technology and areas of opportunity at MedStar Health (e.g., remote patient monitoring).

MTIC, alongside the entire MedStar Health system, will help build a unifying infrastructure that allows us to be a national leader in this evolving care delivery model.

MTIC In the News

• MI2 Newsroom, "MedStar Health Telehealth Team Marks One Year of COVID-19 Response Efforts"

• MI2 Newsroom, "MedStar Health Research Reveals Counterintuitive Findings on COVID-19 Chatbot Use"

• MI2 Newsroom, "Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Awards MedStar Health Almost $1 Million Grant to Lead a Telehealth Research Alliance with Two Other Top Health Systems"

• MI2 Newsroom, "MedStar Health surpasses 500,000 telehealth sessions delivered during COVID-19 in October 2020”

• MI2 Newsroom, "MedStar Health research highlights the benefits of integrating telehealth into the Emergency Department workflow during COVID-19"

• MI2 Newsroom, “MedStar Health Shares COVID-19 Telehealth Insights in Two Recent Publications”

• MI2 Newsroom, “FCC awarded MedStar Health close to $1 million to advance telehealth response to COVID-19 crisis”

• MI2 Newsroom, “MI2’s MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center fuels system delivery of 100,000+ telehealth sessions during COVID-19 response by May 1, 2020”

• MI2 Newsroom, “MI2’s MedStar SiTEL Mobile Simulation Lab deployed in April 2020 for COVID-19 response”

• Alliance for Connected Care Press Release, “Congress Acts to Make Telemedicine Available to Seniors During Coronavirus”

• Modern Healthcare, “Congress must act to ensure telehealth can be used to combat the coronavirus”

• Bloomberg, “Automation Actually Creates More Jobs, at Least in the Beginning”

• American Hospital Association, “Members in Action Case Study: TeleTriage Emergency Department Program, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, D.C.”

• Washington Business Journal, “How one D.C. hospital cut down its ER wait times, some of the longest in the city”

• Advisory Board, “How a MedStar hospital slashed ED wait times by more than 1 hour”

• NBC Washington, “Virtual ER Cuts Down on Wait Times at MedStar”

Other Publications

• Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, “Pilot assessment of an on-demand telehealth ‘left without being seen’ follow-up programme”