As a federally qualified health center, Valley View Health Center's patients have several basic barriers to healthcare, like transportation and limited English proficiency. The COVID-19 pandemic added the additional barrier of concerns about in-person clinic visits because of potential virus transmission.

The pandemic created an opportunity to provide care through a virtual platform. But Valley View and most FQHCs were limited here because FQHCs were unable to bill for most telehealth services. That was before temporary rule changes during the pandemic.

New technologies popping up every day

"Learning how to navigate the process was intensive and it seemed like a new telehealth platform and communication tool was popping up every day as we tried to quickly provide services to patients without having standard equipment and software," recalled Heidi Zipperer, chief administrative officer at Valley View Health Center.

At the start of the pandemic, Valley View began using Doximity and Doxy.Me as platforms for virtual care communication with patients.

"These were great platforms for our behavioral health team, as we have an integrated program between our medical, dental, behavioral health and pharmacy departments to address patients' care needs," Zipperer said.

"It is especially helpful to expand our behavioral health services to our more rural communities and patients that have transportation or mobility issues. We also expanded the reach of our bilingual providers throughout our region in Southwest Washington."

Heidi Zipperer, Valley View Health Center

Early on in the pandemic, Valley View applied for and was awarded $451,400 from the FCC's telehealth funding program. The funds were for network upgrades, remote patient monitoring devices, laptop computers and tablets to upgrade telecommunications infrastructure and expand telehealth opportunities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic at three clinics offering primary, behavioral health and dental care.

New IT infrastructure

"We have used some of the FCC telehealth award dollars for creating a better IT infrastructure to improve security and reduce dropped visits due to connectivity," Zipperer explained. "We also updated hardware to support the providers in their work doing synchronous video visits. Our new telehealth care delivery has been successful.

"It is especially helpful to expand our behavioral health services to our more rural communities and patients that have transportation or mobility issues," she added. "We also expanded the reach of our bilingual providers throughout our region in Southwest Washington. We are currently utilizing Doxy.me for most visits."

Valley View patients and healthcare teams appreciate the ability to have visits remotely, she said. Unfortunately, the medical team was experiencing a gap with obtaining patient vitals.

"Initially, we used other funding to purchase manual blood pressure cuffs, and while this helps the patient with their self-monitoring and care, it does not track the information over time or share the information with the medical provider," she said.

Onward to connected health

Vital Tech not only provides a platform for sharing of the information of vitals tracked each day through smart devices like blood pressure cuffs, glucometers, pulse oximeters and scales, she said, it also offers a platform for virtual visits that display the patient's vitals so the provider is able to see them during the course of the visit.

"The FCC award funds allowed the purchase of connected patient self-monitoring devices," said Zipperer. "Valley View worked with our IT partner BlueNovo to identify Vital Tech as the choice to provide a platform and connected devices to our medical patients. We are currently piloting the devices at two clinic locations with a planned group of up to 200 patients."

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
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