Cook Children’s began providing virtual urgent care in summer of 2019 and in March of 2020, services expanded to primary care pediatricians seeing patients virtually as well.

Kari Lipscomb, director of Virtual Health at Cook Children’s, said a lot had to happen quickly to make sure patient families could keep their appointments.

“We needed to increase our ability to see urgent care patients, turn on services for our 127 primary care physicians and 33 specialty departments…all in the span of about six days,” Lipscomb said.

In a time where patients were instructed to stay home as much as possible, it was important to the physicians at Cook Children’s to continue to provide care for their own patients whenever possible.

To provide some idea of how fast things are changing, Cook Children’s completed 316 visits via telemedicine in February, 2020, but by March that number increased to 2,794. Cook Children’s doctors and nurses are on track to complete approximately 10,000 in April.

Within days, primary care physicians were seeing their patients via video during office hours while the Virtual Urgent Care providers continued to see patients throughout the day and evening. Because Cook Children’s is an integrated network, all of their physicians, including primary and urgent care can see the patient’s entire medical record.

Visits with the children’s primary care doctor are primarily being covered by insurance, often with no co-pay necessary. Virtual urgent care visits are a flat $50 fee.

In addition to general pediatric care, specialty clinics and specialty education departments were able to quickly integrate video visits into their offerings for patients. This enabled the physicians to minimize disruption to care for children with chronic conditions and new, complex medical needs.

Kari Lipscomb went on to say, “Of course, it wasn’t easy to get everything up and going, but it was so important, and everyone rallied to make it happen. Physicians, their staff, administration and IT support were all necessary to make it happen. Changing something so quickly, doesn’t happen without a lot of help.”

In addition to new services, Cook Children’s has significantly increased their other remote offerings to patients including direct messaging and telephone triage-all in an effort to provide great care while keeping their patients safe.

The big question now, what happens when COVID-19 is gone? Do things go back to normal?

“Many physicians and patients have really come to enjoy their interactions via video and the convenience for the family is really important,” Dr. Justin Smith, medical director of Virtual Health and Innovation states. “While not everything is able to be done via video, I expect that many of our physicians will continue to offer video visits for certain conditions and situations.”

In addition to telemedicine visits, Cook Children’s pediatricians are actively working to help keep patients safe by direct messaging with patient families and providing phone visits when video is not an option. Messages can include a picture or video and can be sent through the MyChart “Messages” tab.

For more on this, view the following:

• Primary Care Video Visits
• Urgent Care Virtual Visits
• Zoom: https://cookchildrens.org/mychart/Pages/video-visits.aspx
• My Chart: https://cookchildrens.org/mychart

Let me be real for a second – it’s been a pain in the you-know-what. We’re updating, changing, training, stressing. I may or may not have purchased more wine this month than usual.

Why are we doing this?

Because it’s better. It’s faster, more efficient, more organized, and SAFER than our old systems.

We are doing it because it will lead to better overall care for your child.

I’m actually really excited about it. As a pediatrician, my days revolve around a computer. Many of you may notice I always bring a computer into the room with me. I show you how your kiddo has grown. I take notes to remember important things you tell me. I look up what happened in the hospital when you went to the Cook Children’s ER. I read that consult note from when your child saw the ENT.

The way I do those things will be changing.

Things will be new and glitchy at first – just like any big change is -- but overall, the improvements in your child’s care will be awesome.

But… what does all of this mean for you and your children?

It means that, for a little while, you might experience a bit of a longer wait in the pediatrician’s waiting room, or urgent care, or ER as we learn to use the system.

You might experience slightly longer hold times on our phones while my staff is figuring out how best to schedule your kiddo’s appointment.

Our front desk people have to get used to the changes in booking appointments, changing charts, and updating your insurance information. Don’t worry, it’ll speed up with time.

Our nurses might need a little extra time to type in what medications your child is on, their medical history, and your concerns. Again – this’ll improve quickly.

It means that I, as your PCP, will be able to know every single thing that happened to your child in the hospital (as opposed to a tiny summary that doesn’t give me much information). Every single vital sign, oxygen reading, X-ray, lab result, consult note – I’ll have access to all of it! I may fumble around for the first few days when I try to show you things on my computer. Feel free to giggle at me.

It means that your child’s specialists and I will be able to communicate more effectively.

It means that YOU will have a new portal system called MyChart.

This thing is awesome!

• You’ll be able to look up your child’s vaccine records and print them, see summaries of all of our visits together, and ask me (and my staff) direct emailed questions!
• You can look up test results, see lab work, and find out when your next appointment is!
• Go to www.cookchildrens.org/mychart for more information - You can sign up now!
• It means that we will be SAFER – more safety checks on prescriptions, and constant updates to how we calculate and order things.
• It means it will be less of a hassle for us to get your child’s medical records from many hospitals around the country.

Bear with us, friends, as we embark on this new journey. I promise, it makes a difference in your child’s care.

And feel free to bring us some sympathy chocolate at the office on March 1st…. ;-)