Care Innovation Lab and Telehealth | MedStar Institute for Innovation | MedStar Health

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Expanding the boundaries for quality care

Please note: If you are a patient seeking telehealth urgent care, please visit our webpage focused on accessing this care here. The following information is primarily intended to provide a business overview of our telehealth work at MedStar Health. If you are a MedStar Health associate, you can find more telehealth resources and digital health information on the MedStar Health Telehealth Hub.

The Care Innovation Lab within the MedStar Institute for Innovation creates a dynamic, collaborative environment to pursue new approaches to care and clinical workflows across the care continuum. Working hand-in-hand with MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center, the Care Innovation Lab strives to enhance and expand access to MedStar Health facilities and other offerings, including in patients’ homes and beyond.

Featured work

Care Innovation Lab initiatives

Our Care Innovation Lab works across the spectrum of care delivery models at MedStar Health to explore, build, and scale new ideas and capabilities that will advance the future of health care. Examining a wide range of emerging care technologies, opportunities, and innovations, the Care Innovation Lab team partners across MedStar Health and beyond to transform care delivery.

Examples of priority innovation initiatives the Care Innovation Lab is accelerating include:

  • Acute care at home: We are elevating the monitoring and sophistication of care that MedStar Health patients can receive from their homes by centralizing and advancing our related system strategy, priority programs, and vendor partnerships. In-home acute care capabilities are striving to prevent hospital readmissions, enable safer and earlier discharges, and support patient care coordination and experience. Learn more about our acute care at home work here or read the related press release here.

  • Acute care of the future: We are working to revolutionize the inpatient care model by integrating innovative workflows and technologies. Our focus centers on enhancing interactive patient care; implementing remote visual monitoring; pioneering virtual nursing practices; exploring connected hospital medicine; and continually evolving our work as we learn. These advancements aim to elevate patient experiences and clinical outcomes, while also nurturing the wellbeing of our healthcare providers.

Telehealth operations

MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center provides telehealth infrastructure, best practices, subject matter expertise, project implementation, and programmatic operational support across MedStar Health through the focus areas that follow. We collaborate closely with our partners across the system to make these offerings possible—and with the highest levels of quality and safety.

MTIC associates Christina Drayer and Dale Hicks Brown demonstrate video visit

Consultative telehealth

Our Consultative Telehealth team advances inpatient and facility-based telehealth, enabling provider-to-provider, provider-to-patient, and patient-to-family connections. We work to ensure a positive telehealth experience for the patients and providers we serve by leading telehealth platform operations and maintenance, and offering technology innovation, consultation, and education.

Examples of our work include:

  • MedStar Acute Care Coordinating Center (MAC3): This program enables emergency medicine providers in command centers to provide remote triage and other support to eligible patients in our emergency departments and urgent cares 24/7 via video. Read a related case study here.

  • Specialty teleconsultations: Telehealth devices can be used to make important connections if patients or providers could benefit from an expert consultation with one or more of our medical professionals located outside of their facility (e.g., telestroke, cardiology, transplant).

  • Telehealth Technology Coordinator (TTC) program: This team further integrates telehealth technologies and workflow into hospital environments. A non-clinical staff member, TTCs provide the “last mile” delivery of on-site services, technical help, and session facilitation to support clinical staff and ensure reliable and timely bedside telehealth connections.

  • Interpretation services: We also offer extensive language interpretation in our facilities and beyond via telehealth.


Consumer telehealth

Our consumer telehealth team ensures a smooth experience during clinical telehealth interactions and patient communications that typically occur in patients’ homes or other locations outside of MedStar Health facilities through connected care delivery models. We support the following related areas:

  • MedStar eVisit: We offer on-demand, urgent care via video. Learn how to access this care here, or read past case studies that highlight our work to scale (here) and support the community (here) through this service.

  • Scheduled telehealth visits: Patients can schedule video appointments with primary care and specialty providers. Read a case study here about how MedStar Health scaled this platform within days in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Remote patient monitoring (RPM): We proactively and virtually track patients’ health surrounding visits through connected devices that gather physiologic data (e.g., blood pressure) and patient-reported outcome measures over a designated period of time (e.g., pregnancy). Our patients have used RPM tools to manage chronic conditions, maternal fetal medicine needs, and more. Read a case study here.

  • Patient engagement solutions: To continue meeting patients where they are and when it is best to communicate, our team has been exploring, building, and scaling multi-channel, digital engagement solutions, such as program-specific chatbots.

  • Behavioral health telehealth programs: Telehealth offerings transformed behavioral healthcare delivery during the pandemic and continue to offer innovative solutions as the nation faces historic demand for mental health care, including in emergency department and inpatient settings. Read a related case study here.


Telehealth Operations and Support Center

This remote team supports patients and providers with telehealth-related needs, including real-time technical support, provider scheduling, virtual waiting room management, patient prescriptions, problem resolution, and other activities. They also regularly help teams to innovate and integrate related enhancements to continue elevating telehealth capabilities and experiences.

Policy and advocacy

The telehealth policy landscape continues to evolve nationally and regionally, with stakeholders striving to stabilize the legislative environment to support telehealth as an enduring and sustainable aspect of care delivery. MedStar Health is committed to advancing digital literacy and health equity, recognizing these priorities as critical to ensuring telehealth access, quality, and safety.

Our experts often collaborate with advocacy partners to share operational and research insights, helping to shape public policy and promote equitable care solutions. By focusing on these efforts, MedStar Health aims to encourage thoughtful, evidence-based policy progress while positioning itself as a leader in fostering innovation and equity in care delivery.

Education and fellowship

Given the rapid and wide-ranging expansion of telehealth in recent years, we have both increased and diversified our related education offerings. In addition to regularly calling upon the expertise and services of MedStar Health SiTEL within our own MedStar Institute for Innovation team, we have also added a dedicated educational expert to our own team to explore and pursue related possibilities and create specialized provider training programs.

  • The Digital Health and Innovation Fellowship is a one-year fellowship program managed through a joint effort between MedStar Washington Hospital, MedStar Georgetown University Emergency Medicine Residency, and the MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center. The fellowship immerses participants in a leading connected care program to learn more about regulatory requirements, telehealth revenue cycle, and business development, with 60% of scope dedicated to working as an attending physician. Learn more.

 

Research and collaboration

With a commitment to furthering telehealth research and education, MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center has helped make the following efforts possible:

  • Connected CARE & Safety Consortium is led by MedStar Health, collaborating with other leading health systems to study telehealth and other care innovations. Current work includes a Patient Safety Learning Lab (PSLL) funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Learn more.

  • Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center (RESPTC) and the Biocontainment Unit (BCU) at MedStar Washington Hospital Center is the FEMA Region 3 resource for community, public health, and regional hospital needs in preparation and response to high consequence infection such as Ebola. This is one of 13 national centers with this expertise with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The team is deeply involved in providing innovation to improve patient and provider safety and cost effectiveness through use of telehealth and remote monitoring technology and processes. Learn more.

  • Additional published research, conducted in collaboration with the MedStar Health Research Institute, includes thought leadership published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, npj Digital Medicine, and Health Affairs Forefront.

Our innovation labs

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Representing one of three innovation labs within the MedStar Institute for Innovation, our Care Innovation Lab works alongside our Business Innovation Lab and Information Innovation Lab. These teams establish and offer specialized expertise and services to ultimately help deliver innovation capabilities and solutions across MedStar Health.

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Our team

Innovation and telehealth leadership