What We’ve Learned So Far About Virtual Care During COVID-19
Takeaways from Children’s Healthcare Canada Conference
This past November, Children’s Healthcare Canada hosted their annual conference (delivered entirely virtually for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic). HIROC is a proud educational partner of the annual event.
“We had record attendance this year!” said Kerri-Ann Mainville, CHC’s Manager of Member Engagement. “Delegates appreciated all the work that went into the virtual platform, creating opportunities for networking, and of course the amazing speakers,” she added.
The concept of virtual care is not new, but has been heighted considerably during this pandemic. So, with that in mind Children’s Healthcare Canada, Canada Health Infoway, CFHI, SKIP, and HIROC collaborated to bring delegates a couple of educational sessions placing virtual care in the spotlight.
Improving access to healthcare through virtual service delivery
If you missed this particular session, we’ve put together some main takeaways from the workshop, including what to consider for privacy, accessibility, and how to implement what’s really important to patients and their families at a deeper level.
For conference delegates with an all-access pass, you can still view recorded sessions until December 31, 2020.
The story of virtual care during COVID-19 can be told through Justine Dol, a doctorate student at Dalhousie in Halifax, who collaborated with the nearby IWK hospital.
Dol recently took an interest in the idea of a text message based coaching program for new moms.
What happened next was stranger than fiction.
As she was getting the first trials off the ground, she became a new mom herself. Her son Owen is now 18 months old.
Then, just as she was coming back from maternity leave, COVID-19 hit. The text message support program was just getting off the ground. It was already about 90 per cent virtual, now had to become completely remote.
Dol and her team quickly adapted, and the initiative was a success.
The program involved sending around two texts a day to new moms. This was intended to help coach them through the first few months of their babies’ new lives.
Dol and her team quickly learned some of the nuances of virtual care. First, they learned the importance of positivity in the tone of the messages during the pandemic.
“This means talking about what mothers ‘should’ do, as opposed to what they ‘shouldn’t’”, said Dol. “So, they should still go see their healthcare provider to get vaccines and checkups, they should go for walks, rather than the constant messages of what they can’t do.”
They also learned how important it was to share the ever-changing COVID-19 regulations – especially when it came to new moms who would occasionally need to go into hospitals – a sensitive space for COVID-19 considerations.
Overall, the pilot project received great feedback from participants, and had some measurable positive effects. Another win for adapting patient-centred care to a digital environment on the fly.
WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN GOING VIRTUAL WITH CARE
Dr. Reshma Amin, a staff respirologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children had an innovative virtual healthcare success story during COVID-19 as well.
She tested out an app-based system for people who use ventilators, which allowed them to have more seamless care, while not having to carry their ventilator around to hospitals – something that could cause problems even before pandemic times.
Like Justine Dol, her virtual healthcare success didn’t start just because of COVID-19. It was in its early stages before the pandemic hit, and was forced to go completely virtual very quickly.
Dr. Amin shared her top tips for taking healthcare to a virtual setting:
- Consider privacy and the law. Amin says a lot of virtual healthcare applications involve third party companies – and this opens you up to both privacy and legal risks. It’s important to do an external assessment of the vendors your organization works with, and know everything about how, and where your patients’ information is stored.
- Make sure everyone can use it. Amin says while using technology in healthcare has many benefits, it also opens up a discrepancy of accessibility: people in rural areas with slower internet, or those who can’t afford devices of their own can lose out. That’s why it’s important to provide devices, and in some cases, make sure they can access the internet without fast wi-fi.
Amin stresses, if choosing to work with a third party partner, keep these 5 principles in mind:
- Privacy
- Security
- Availability
- Processing integrity
- Confidentiality
The workshop brought to life the many lessons learned when adapting to and implementing virtual care and it became clear the main challenge would be around being forced to take on new roles revolving technology, legal, and ethics – all in order to make sure safe, secure and accessible care is available.
There doesn’t seem to be an official roadmap – but Dr. Amin added that she is sharing what she learned on the fly as a call to the greater healthcare community to establish clear do’s and don’ts for online care.
By Julian Abraham, Communications and Marketing Associate, HIROC