How Mount Sinai is Boosting the Digital Healthcare Experience

August 03, 2023 - With digitally enabled healthcare skyrocketing, spurred by a once-in-a-century public health emergency (PHE), healthcare providers nationwide are fortifying their digital tools.

Adoption of digital tools has spiked, with a 2022 survey showing that a single physician uses an average of 3.8 digital tools. This is a massive jump from 2.2 in 2016. The 2016 and 2022 surveys were conducted by the American Medical Association and polled 1,300 US physicians each. The survey also shows that 93 percent of physicians said digital health tools offer significant advantages in patient care.

Mount Sinai Health System is the latest provider to add to its collection of digital tools. Last month, the New York City-based health system launched three tools to enhance patients' digital healthcare experience: Check Symptoms & Get Care, My Next Steps, and Mount Sinai Virtual Assistant.

ENHANCING PATIENT EXPERIENCE

The decision to implement these tools is rooted in patient and consumer feedback. The health system worked with its patient experience team to gather this feedback through group reviews and one-on-one interviews.

"We are trying to design products based on what our patients and our consumers are telling us that they see as gaps from a digital perspective," said Kristin Myers, executive vice president, chief digital and information officer, and dean for digital and information technology (IT) at Mount Sinai Health System. "And I think that for us, being able to really listen to them is important and is part of the overall digital experience vision that we have. And that vision is to digitally enable Mount Sinai as the preferred destination for our community by anticipating needs to easily provide equitable and a seamless experience."

The tools are all available on MyMountSinai, a mobile application developed in 2021 that provides a gateway to Mount Sinai physicians and services.

The Check Symptoms & Get Care tool is a responsive web-based questionnaire that helps patients self-identify their injury or illness, Myers said. Based on the results, it provides a personalized list of telehealth or in-person care options.

"It uses a natural language processing to translate medical data and can match more than, say, 300 unique primary symptoms," she said. "So, an example would be if you had a stye on your eye, you would put in the symptoms, and [the app] would really walk you through how you should seek care at Mount Sinai."

The second capability, My Next Steps, provides patients personalized action items, education resources, and support for their post-clinic visit plan. According to Myers, the health system's goal is to ensure that patients feel connected to their health journey across the continuum of care. It also aims to improve patient experience and retention and reduce follow-up questions.

The third capability is the Mount Sinai Virtual Assistant, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that enables self-scheduling and care navigation.

"The chatbot helps with directions, locations, viewing appointments, canceling appointments, and rescheduling appointments," Myers explained. "And we're looking to expand functionality as we create new releases with that."

These tools were developed and launched after patient focus group reviews and interviews that highlighted challenges in navigating the patient care journey. For instance, Myers noted that patients can get confused about what level of care they need. This is where a symptom checker mobile capability can help by triaging them digitally based on their symptoms and directing them to the care they may need.   

"Or [the tool can tell you] whether you need to go to urgent care, and based on your geolocation, we know the closest urgent care and can tell you where to go," she added. "I think just giving patients the tools they need to navigate their care is really important, rather than them having to wait until an office opens and trying to get an appointment in a traditional way."

Not only are the tools intended to support patients moving through the care continuum, but they are also meant to empower patients. Generally, people do not want to have to make a call to get information, preferring to get an answer on their phones via an app or chatbot, Myers said.

NAVIGATING HURDLES TO THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

To implement these digital tools, Mount Sinai Health System leveraged a product-oriented implementation structure.

The product-oriented structure involves a digital governance committee that prioritizes the tools in accordance with their functionality and the experience of using them, Myers explained. The IT department then determines the tools' release dates, which are organized in two-week sprints based on the user experience. The department executes a change management plan before, during, and after the releases. Post-implementation, they track adoption and usage metrics and get feedback on the tools.

The health system leveraged this product-oriented implementation structure to ensure a focus on user needs.

"[We wanted to] ensure that we've got that agility within the team and that we can scale innovation, and so the implementation process leverages agile principles," Myers said. "I think that ensuring that we're able to look at this in a product-oriented way and that we're able to turn around additional functionality within sprints, within our release process, I think is extremely important."

But moving to a product-oriented structure can be challenging. At Mount Sinai, Myers found that the IT team was more used to larger programs and sequenced releases that could take up to six months. This is why change management is critical.

"I think a common misstep around all of this is not thinking through the change management plan ahead of time," she said. "Implementing the technology is sometimes the easiest part. I think that the hard part is making sure that people are actually using the tools and using it correctly and maximizing its use and benefits."

Effective change management involves four primary components, according to Myers. First, organization leaders, staff, and other stakeholders across the organization must align around the goals and priorities of the technology deployment. Second, the organization must encourage adoption through consistent and targeted communications. Third, the organization must focus on analytics and measuring stakeholder readiness and adoption to support program decisions and activities. And finally, the organization must assess, develop, and deliver role-based training.

To support change management, Mount Sinai established a digital ambassador network. The network aims to promote digital products and educate stakeholders about their uses to improve adoption, Myers said.

The network includes three groups. The first is the core digital team responsible for the implementation and the reporting out of metrics; the second is a broader team of end users, providers, leaders, and other stakeholders; and the third is a team of operations ambassadors that observe how these digital products are perceived among users and identify opportunities for improvement at the ground level.

MOUNT SINAI'S NEXT STEPS

As virtual care cements its place in healthcare delivery, Mount Sinai is focused on growing its digital tools to improve patient and caregiver experience.

"We want to be able to build new capabilities across care navigation, digital access and pre-arrival, virtual health, and language accessibility," Myers said.

Among these new capabilities are translation services for the top languages spoken by the health system's patient population and resources to simplify the patient financial experience.  

Further, Mount Sinai aims to enhance the in-room hospital digital experience, Myers said. For instance, it is looking to improve the television experience at its hospitals to provide similar functionality to the television experience at hotels. This includes adding branded landing pages, on-demand entertainment options, and digital meal ordering and incorporating those with EHR data, patient education, and the ability to video call friends and family.  

"We're moving from doing digital to truly being digital as an organization," Myers said.