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NYC Health + Hospitals Launches At-Home COVID-19 Text Message-Based Symptom Monitoring Program
Apr 13, 2020
NYC Health + Hospitals today announced the launch of its at-home COVID-19 text message-based symptom monitoring platform for discharged Emergency Department (ED) patients. Patients who are discharged from the ED with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 who do not require admission to the hospital can now self-enroll to receive secure text messages every 12- to 24-hours at home to assess their symptoms as a part of this program. If a person reports escalating symptoms, they will receive a follow-up phone call by a care team member and, if necessary, be referred into the hospital for clinical care. The text message-based platform is available to patients in English and Spanish, with plans to make it accessible in the 14 most common languages represented by the system’s patient population. The Stay-At-Home Symptom Monitoring Program will help the public health care system continue to free up capacity within its facilities to care for patients who are most severely affected by COVID-19, while supervising and triaging the health of at-risk patients remotely.
“NYC Health + Hospitals is leaning on innovative and efficient methods of monitoring patient’s health care needs remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing the best care to patients and minimizing the spread of the Coronavirus, said NYC Health + Hospitals President and CEO Mitchell Katz, MD. “It is especially important now to provide New Yorkers the health care they need where they’re safest.”
“The newly launched text message-based COVID-19 symptom monitoring platform allows the public health care system to offload our EDs and allows our heroic health care workers to treat the severely ill,” said NYC Health + Hospitals Vice President and Chief Quality Officer Eric Wei, MD, MBA. “This technology extends the reach of our frontline health care workers – enabling us to monitor patients effectively and efficiently – while keeping patients safely at home.
The Stay-At-Home Symptom Monitoring Program adds to NYC Health + Hospitals’ ongoing efforts to care for New Yorkers in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and statewide lockdown. The City’s public health care system continues to operate a COVID-19 hotline for concerned New Yorkers with symptoms not severe enough to require a trip to the ED. More than 50,000 connections have been made through the COVID-19 hotline, with approximately 90 percent of callers being advised to stay at home and monitor their mild symptoms instead of going to the hospital.
For more information on NYC Health + Hospitals’ COVID-19 responses, please visit the newsroom.