How to Perform Thousands of COVID-19 Tests per Day with Epic

When Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS) began working with the state of Connecticut on mass COVID-19 testing, their task was to provide tests to 39 skilled nursing facilities and to state employees across the Constitution State. In all, they now conduct around 2,100 tests per day throughout the health system. Their staff use Epic to connect personally with each patient who has a positive result.

Patients can schedule an appointment with a physician order using MyChart, or YNHHS staff can schedule the appointment for them. After clinicians administer the tests and results come back, staff at YNHHS make sure that every patient with a positive result receives a personal phone call and instructions to follow up with a provider.

“We needed at least 15 different variations of the same basic workflow—from mobile units to drive-up testing—to test patients efficiently across all those different sites,” said Nitu Kashyap, MD, YNHHS’ associate CMIO. “But after the test is ordered and resulted, we have a single patient-centric model that helps care coordinators reach the patient, no matter where in the state the patient was tested.”

To make these calls quickly and efficiently, staff use Epic’s Coordinated Care Management application to see a list of patients with a positive result and which patients they still need to reach. All of a patient’s calls and visits are linked together in Epic. With a complete view of the communication with a patient, care coordinators can work as a team to follow up when a patient can’t be reached on the first try.

Epic community members can learn more about how to use Coordinated Care Management to reach out to patients and connect them with providers in the Managing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) With Epic documentation on the UserWeb.