Join us for the next Bite-Sized Learning Session on Sunday, June 28, at 8 p.m. live on the OAFP Facebook page.
Moderated by Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (OAFP) President-Elect Mike Sevilla, MD, this week’s session will feature Mark Rood, MD, FAAFP, family medicine lead physician for Cleveland Clinic Express Care Online (ECO). Dr. Rood will share how his system was able to quickly ramp up its use of virtual visits in response to the COVID-19 pandemic – walking you through challenges faced and lessons learned.
This interview serves as a follow-up to an article authored by Dr. Rood for The Journal of Family Practice. Following is an excerpt from the article:
“As the family medicine lead physician for Cleveland Clinic ECO, specifically its on-demand virtual visit platform, I have been performing virtual visits as part of a small team of physicians and nurse practitioners for five years, and was capably seeing five to 15 patients in an afternoon across the 18 states in which I am licensed. Until recently, our Distance Health team collectively would perform between 3,000 and 4,000 virtual visits per month.
On March 14, we had the virtual visit equivalent of the phone ringing off the hook—to the point of breaking the phone. ECO Medical Director Matthew Faiman, MD, texted me to ask if I would be willing to sign on to the platform for a bit to help out with high volume—and whoosh, just by signing on, I had 20 patients waiting in the queue, with hundreds more trying to get a visit, all related to COVID-19. And, patients who would normally leave a line if the wait time was more than five minutes were willing to stay online for more than 3 hours, if necessary, to consult with a provider.
After handling in excess of 38 patients that afternoon (some of whom were unfortunately dropped by the platform, which was overwhelmed by sheer volume), I did my best impression of Roy Scheider in Jaws: I emailed Dr. Faiman, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
This series of Bite-Sized Learning sessions has been created to serve as an opportunity for members to come together during a time when connecting and learning from each other is crucial. Join family physician presenters as they share their story of transition, practice pivot, or a newfound joy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The OAFP will host these learning sessions on Sunday evenings (as we have speakers and topics), beginning at 8 p.m. Members can join the conversation by logging on to the OAFP Facebook page to watch live. We’ll open with a brief welcome and turn it over to the moderator and member presenter to share. Live viewers can submit questions and comments through Facebook comments throughout the session. The sessions will be 60 minutes or less!
- Sunday, July 12, with Kelly Thibert, DO, current resident director on the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Board of Directors and graduating resident, discussing the AAFP National Conference transition to a virtual format and resident and student issues.
- Sunday, July 19, with Renee Crichlow, MD, president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, to discuss advocacy, leadership, public health, health disparities, and social determinants of health.
The learning sessions will be recorded and available on the OAFP Facebook page, OAFP YouTube page, as well as through the OAFP website for future viewing.
If you have suggestions for future learning sessions or have a story to tell yourself, please contact Kaitlin McGuffie.