Podcast with NYP CIO Daniel Barchi, Part 2: “We Never Want to Lead with Technology.”

Perhaps the most common thread for health IT leaders during the past few months has been the spike in telehealth adoption. Organizations had to quickly expand — or in some cases, build out — their offerings to ensure care continuity. But there were a select few who already had the infrastructure in place; one of those was NewYork-Presbyterian, an academic health system located right in the heart of the Big Apple.

The fact that NYP’s OnDemand platform was already being utilized on a large scale came in handy, particularly during the early days of Covid. Some might even say the organization was lucky. Luck, however, had nothing to do with it. Instead, it was leadership’s dedication in pushing the initiative forward — without pushing it on physicians — and ensuring the right pieces were in place, that led to what has been a tremendous success story, according to Daniel Barchi.

Recently, healthsystemCIO spoke with Barchi about how Covid affected his team’s strategy (particularly in terms of its Epic implementation), why transitioning to remote work turned out to be a positive, and how disaster planning is forever changed.

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Key Takeaways



* NewYork-Presbyterian’s success with telemedicine didn’t happen overnight; the organization began laying the groundwork back in 2015.

* One of the keys to success with any initiative? Don’t lead with technology; aim to deliver technology in a way that helps providers deliver care more effectively.

* The more thoughtful organizations are about how they invest their resources, the less likely IT teams will have to delay projects in the event of a situation like a pandemic.

* Since the worst of the surge, NYP IT leadership has been working to refine its risk management practices to be able to apply lessons learned when preparing for future events.



Q&A with Daniel Barchi, Part 2 (Click here to view Part 1)

Gamble:  One topic that’s been prevalent through all of this is telemedicine. From our previous conversations, I know NewYork-Presbyterian has been at the forefront. Can you talk about how having an infrastructure in place has made an impact?

Barchi:  It’s hard to ramp up quickly if you have no experience. The work that we did from 2015 to 2019 really laid the groundwork for our ability to ramp up telemedicine. New York-Presbyterian was already a national leader in telemedicine through NYP OnDemand, Virtual Urgent Care, our mobile stroke units, and all the other programs we have. We were doing several hundred remote patient visits every week back in January and February of this year.

Then when Covid hit and there was no easy, safe way to see a physician, our physicians stepped up and rapidly increased the ability to do remote visits. We went from several hundred visits a week to more than 24,000 visits a week in March. And as the ability to do in-person visits has returned, the amount of telemedicine visits has dropped, but it still represents up to 30 percent of all visits, and probably will going forward.

Because there are many visits in which it’s safe and efficient for physicians to see patients remotely, and it’s also convenient. And so what we’re seeing now is that telemedicine isn’t an ‘either or’ tool, it’s an ‘and’ tool where, in many cases, it makes the most sense for visit to be done virtually. But in other cases,