Mercy Virtual and COVID-19: Healthcare Redefined

Keith M. Starke, MD, FACP, SVP & CQO; Joseph Kelly, EVP Office of Transformation; Gavin Helton, MD, SVP Population Health; and Ashok Palagiri, MD, Physician Lead for Virtual Hospital Medicine, Mercy Health. Mercy Virtual was established over a decade ago, initially as a centralized teleICU monitoring center, supporting 38 hospitals spread across Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, with the ability to significantly reduce mortality and morbidity rates, length of stay, and overall costs.

Nationally, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in telehealth of all kinds, and particularly at Mercy Virtual, which became a critical coordinating point for COVID-19-related screening, follow-up and remote monitoring. Since then, the vision of Mercy Virtual as a new way of providing healthcare has become a reality, with expanded consumer engagement technologies, care management and coordinated services. The panel describes this transformation, the lessons learned along the way, and the implications for healthcare providers everywhere who are redefining care for their communities across the country.

teleICU | COVID | telehealth | remote monitoring | consumer engagement | care management | transformation