Managing Triage and Scheduling in the Wake of COVID-19
When the pandemic hit last year, shelter-in-place orders across the nation meant business closures and working remotely, but for essential healthcare organizations like the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) it was a different story. Frontline staff were overworked and there was an influx of patients concerned about potential COVID-19 symptoms.
To help reduce the burden on frontline staff and the UCSF COVID-19 hotline, and to manage and triage scheduling patients, a collaborative team developed and rolled out a symptom checker that patients could access from their MyChart patient portal. And they were able to do so within a week.
In a world where digital tools can sometimes take weeks and months to develop, reiterate, and implement, how did a team – composed of staff from the Clinical Innovation Center, Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI), Digital Patient Experience, and Office of Population Health – deliver so quickly?
We learn how from Associate Director of Clinical Innovation for the Department of Medicine, Tim Judson, MD, MPH, in his presentation* COVID-19 Symptom Checker: MyChart Self-Triage & Self-Scheduling Tool for the 2021 UCSF Health Improvement Poster Symposium.
Since its initial implementation, the COVID-19 Symptom Checker has continually evolved, improved, and grown in usage. Some key highlights from Dr. Judson’s presentation include:
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The impact has been significant
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Decreased time from triage to scheduled appointment
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More than 30,000 patients have used the tool
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Available in Spanish in English
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Several lessons were learned:
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Importance of integration
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The Symptom Checker is for triage and not a diagnostic tool
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It is possible to have appropriate use for digital tools
*COVID-19 Symptom Checker Team: Tim Judson, MD, MPH; Chris Miller; Aimee Williams, MPH; Ralph Gonzales, MD, MSPH
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