Franciscan Health expands its Epic-linked telemedicine offerings

One significant change was to increase remote patient monitoring, offering more resources and assistance so that patients might feel comfortable recovering at home. Prior to 2020, the Mishawaka, Indiana-based Franciscan Health health system conducted just a small number of telemedicine visits. There wasn't a lot of programming for patients to interact with Franciscan Alliance clinicians via telemedicine, with the exception of some tele-stroke and behavioural health virtual treatment. Some specialties were in the process of requesting telehealth technologies in February 2020, while some of them, like urgent care, were already in the testing phase. When COVID-19 surfaced in March 2020, everything changed. The requirement to keep at-risk patients out of healthcare facilities was made necessary by the emergency situation and stay-at-home directives.