NewYork-Presbyterian, a New York City-based integrated healthcare delivery system comprised of nine hospitals, is rolling out a new suite of digital health services, NYP OnDemand, with a particular focus on expanded telehealth services.
According to an announcement from NewYork-Presbyterian, the enterprise-wide digital health platform is designed to expand patient care, while also extending access to clinical expertise of NewYork-Presbyterian’s physicians to their peers throughout the hospital’s healthcare network. The NYP OnDemand suite of services was developed by New York-Presbyterian’s Innovation Center and the health system stated that it was able to expand its telehealth services through its philanthropic partnership with Rita E. Hauser and Gustave M. Hauser.
The NYP OnDemand digital health platform is comprised of telehealth services for both patients and providers, available on the NewYork-Presbyterian website and mobile app. The services will include the NYP OnDemand Second Opinion service, which launched earlier this summer. To date, there are more than 300 physicians in 80 medical specialties participating in the digital second opinion service, in which NewYork-Presbyterian specialists from both ColumbiaDoctors and Weill Cornell Medicine offer clinical expertise for second opinions to patients around the country through an online portal.
The NYP OnDemand platform also includes inter-hospital digital consults to connect patients at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Regional Network Hospitals to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital specialists, with the aim of the inter-hospital consults providing greater access to advanced specialty care and facilitating real-time communication between providers.
Digital emergency and urgent care also will be offered through the new digital platform. As part of a new pilot program, the Lisa Perry Emergency Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell will offer visitors to the ER the option of a virtual visit through real-time video interactions with a clinician after having an initial triage and medical screening exam. According to the announcement, the virtual visit will be conducted in a private room with a webcam/monitor in order to reduce wait time spent in the ER. “For any non-emergency conditions that require expedited treatment, patients will eventually also be able to access a separate virtual urgent care service from NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell doctors from the comfort of their home via the NYP OnDemand smartphone app,” the NYP OnDemand announcement stated.
Later this fall, a digital follow-up appointment service will launch as part of the digital platform to provide patients a virtual follow-up option.
“At NewYork-Presbyterian, we are looking to redefine the intersection of technology and healthcare and our new digital health platform is our way of strengthening traditional telehealth services,” Steven J. Corwin, M.D., president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian, said in a prepared statement. “Together with ColumbiaDoctors and Weill Cornell Medicine, we are using data and technology to provide the very best care and treatment outcomes for our patients—wherever they may be—as well as seamless peer-to-peer for our physicians across the entire organization.”
In addition to the patient access services, NYP OnDemand also facilitates real-time peer-to-peer physician consults within the nine hospitals that are part of the NewYork-Presbyterian system. The NewYork-Presbyterian Telestroke Initiative, which has been deployed at NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital, uses video conferencing and data sharing to allows 24/7 coverage for acute stroke care with evaluation by a neurologist with stroke expertise. To date, the telestroke service has resulted in improved door-to-treatment times, which has been shown to improve overall patient outcomes, the health system stated. In the coming months, additional digital consult services such as behavioral health, emergency medicine, and pediatrics will also be established.
