CDHI Presents at Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM)

Tim Judson, MD, MPH, and Smitha Ganeshan, MD, MBA, presented at the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, April 6th – 9th. The meeting’s theme was “Dimensions of a Generalist Career: Discovery, Equity, and Impact.”  

Operational Impact and Cost Avoidance from Use of a COVID-19 Online Symptom Checker presented by Tim Judson, MD, MPH and UCSF Assistant Professor of Medicine: 

• The symptom checker was rolled out during the pandemic to help reduce the burden on frontline staff and the UCSF COVID-19 hotline while giving patients 24/7 access to triage and scheduling.

• Led by Judson, the aims of this study were to estimate health system efficiency gains resulting from patient access to the COVID-19 online symptom checker versus calling the hotline; and to estimate the cost avoidance resulting from this intervention.

• Since its launch in March 2020, there have been more than 80,000 total uses, and more than 34,000 direct scheduled appointments.

• Judson and his team concluded that most patients chose to use the digital tool for triage and scheduling, less time was spent on the phone by health system personnel (average of 17.8 telephone minutes spent per triage for hotline vs 0.4 minutes average telephone minutes spent per triage involving symptom checker), and the substantial cost savings outweighed development costs (see cost avoidance calculations below)

Impact of a Patient Portal-Based Self-Scheduling Tool for Imaging Studies on Health Disparities presented by Tim Judson, MD, MPH, and UCSF Assistant Professor of Medicine: 

• Led by Resident Physician of Medicine Smitha Ganeshan, MD, MBA, the aims were to understand the utilization of a patient portal-based self-scheduling tool, determine the demographics of patients using it, and to evaluate the impact on patient access and disparities.

• Ganeshan and her team found patients who were less likely to self-schedule included: Latinx and Black/African-American, those with Medi-cal/CC and Medicare, and those who were non-English speaking.

• They concluded that ongoing systemic efforts to facilitate patient use of portal-based applications beyond enrollment are necessary to ensure equitable access, and that health systems need to address barriers in using digital applications such as investing in multilingual tools.