Novant Health Brings Ease, Convenience of Everyday Life Into Care

Imagine a health care experience with the ease and convenience that people enjoy in other aspects of their lives. Novant Health, an integrated system of physician practices, hospitals and outpatient centers in Winston-Salem, N.C., makes it convenient for patients to monitor and manage their health — all coordinated with their providers. Through the MyChart patient portal, patients have access to their records, and can easily make their own appointments and payments, which also saves time spent by team members on administrative tasks. Patients can use the system to conduct e-visits or virtual visits, and the portal is connected to the Apple Health app and Fitbit.

Add analytics to the electronic health record for population health management and the portal becomes an efficient way for clinicians to communicate with and positively impact more patients every day.

“A clinician can search over 5 million patient records in our EHR and identify a patient population to act upon, all within a few seconds,“ says Novant's David Garrett, senior vice president and chief information officer. “They could search the 5 million patients for those with hemoglobin A1C results in the range the physician is interested in, go directly into their records and send information out to them in real time through our MyChart patient portal.”

Checklist

• Work on making health care easy to access, easy to schedule and easy to understand for the consumer.
• Consolidate as many disparate systems as possible into one so that clinicians have the information they need within the patient record.
• Make information on a patient available to clinicians in all settings — primary care, specialty care, acute care and the emergency department.
• Develop the ability to consume data from within and outside your systems — then transform that data into meaningful and actionable information.
• Share appropriate patient data in a secure and confidential approach outside your ecosystem.
• Give providers the information they need, when they need it, within the patient chart.