How Harvard's telehealth program can be a guide toward success

"This served as our model as we focused our system on equity, access, and patient and family engagement to design a virtual care system that now supports our clinician workforce, consisting of over 2,000 providers," he continued. Throughout the system's journey to conducting upwards of 500,000 virtual visits, said Harvey, "we have had to consider privacy and security, multiple channels to engage patients – text, email, telephone, chat, video – language support, physician burnout, staff training and access to care for underserved populations. "We conducted multiple needs assessments, physician champion group meetings, and ancillary staff engagement to come up with a set of guiding principles that proved essential," said Mechanic. At the height of the pandemic, he said, about two-thirds of ambulatory visits were conducted virtually – and most BIDMC staff and HMFP physicians still use the telehealth platform today.