The View Point Health is a behavioral health agency based in Lawrenceville, Georgia, which serves Medicaid to uninsured and underinsured individuals.
The Problem
The View Point Health community was facing an issue of limited resources and access to upgrading the technology.
The agency was using VSEE as the platform for providing telemedicine. Now, the agency came to know about Zoom for Healthcare and begin shifting from VSEE to Zoom for Healthcare. Client satisfaction and providers’ care delivery feedback, revealed that Zoom was easy to use as compared to VSEE.
Proposal
The clinical director at View Point Health, Makini Corlette said that “We proposed for improvement in technology by expanding the use of Zoom for Healthcare to deliver telemedicine and also to serve other clinical support purposes, such as treatment teams, collaboration with service lines to coordinate client care, psychiatric consults, clinical supervision, and many more”. She also added that “The agency has also planned to purchase updated equipment and devices such as desktop computers, laptops, and tablets for remote providers to improve the delivery of telemedicine”.
These actions would help the agency to expand the use of telemedicine across different providers and programs by upgrading to the current technology.
Meeting The Challenge
The View Point Health used the funds awarded by FCC’s telehealth program to introduce new technology and made the agency capable to fully transition all of its providers with Zoom for Healthcare to deliver telemedicine.
The agency by introducing the new technology has broadened its pathways of clinical care. As the agency does not wants to be restricted to initial and follow up psychiatric appointments.
Corlette also said, “For ensuring the efficiency of launching telemedicine appointments, our Qualifacts CareLogic electronic health record includes the option to embed Zoom appointment links within the schedule, that will increase the ease of navigating between the appointments”.
Conclusion
The ViewPoint Health was awarded an amount of $315,672 from FCC’s telehealth program for laptop and desktop computers, along with the software licences for conferencing software and equipment. This equipment and technology are used by the agency to provide mental health services in this crisis to individuals both with or without COVID-19 symptoms.
Corlette exclaimed that “The agency has seen an increase in kept appointments, which has decreased our overall no-show rates”.
The ViewPoint Health has conducted two surveys for staff as well as clients after the launch of the expansion of telemedicine and the results received show that telemedicine is an effective practice that allows easy access towards quality care with a reduction in scheduling and transportation barriers.
