WCH fast-tracks COVID self-assessment tool

TORONTO – Women’s College Hospital (WCH), an outpatient hospital in Toronto, made substantial changes to their facility and fast-tracked the development of a virtual care system. WCH turned to Couch & Associates to implement Salesforce’s COVID-19 Care Response Solution and build an online COVID-19 self-assessment tool.

The system is fully integrated with EPIC, WCH’s electronic health record system. This integration created a wholistic patient management system with the following outcomes:

• End-to-end triage
• Increased triage capacity
• Reduced time to treatment
• Fast-tracking of individuals requiring medical attention

WCH established a self-assessment portal where individuals can schedule a test, speak to a physician, lookup the hospital’s location and view their test results. Individuals flagged through the online assessment as high-risk and/or symptomatic, and live within the WCH catchment area, are routed to the hospital’s registration process to receive a virtual assessment from a physician.

In cases where the physician indicates the individual needs to get tested, they are then fast-tracked to WCH’s physical Assessment Centre. All data is stored in EPIC for security and ease of access from the hospital’s physicians.

WCH have received widespread praise from the Toronto public for the safety and efficiency of their COVID-19 assessment process. The hospital received a five-star rating on GTA Testing, a website set up for people to review their experience at testing centers across the region.

“In 4 days, we built an interactive COVID-19 online self-assessment tool and virtual assessment registration process that is fully integrated with our hospital information system,” said Drew Wesley (pictured), CIO, Women’s College Hospital. “Patients who are triaged from our virtual assessment to our in-person assessment center are fast tracked through COVID-19 testing in less than 3 minutes and have their test results available online on our patient portal.”

The solution was showcased in Salesforce’s 360 Blog, highlighting the efforts of Women’s College Hospital, Salesforce and Couch & Associates and their use of technology to combat the pandemic.

About Couch & Associates
Couch & Associates design and deliver innovative solutions to the most complex digital challenges for the world’s biggest brands. The Couch & Associates model combines strategic advisory services, marketing technology expertise and software development capabilities to help clients improve performance through unique approaches tailored to their environments.