Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital delivers vital virtual healthcare with Microsoft Teams

For people who face mobility and transportation challenges, the sheer difficulty of getting to a healthcare provider can be a barrier to care, which in turn affects health outcomes. Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital (ETZ), a leading clinical and educational hospital and trauma center in the Netherlands, sought to address this by expanding virtual healthcare appointments across its various locations in Tilburg and Waalwijk. 

The hospital wanted to start by optimizing virtual appointments for patients in two care pathways—neurology and reproductive medicine—and it was already in the initial stages when the arrival of COVID-19 made the effort an even higher priority. ETZ used Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft Teams EHR connector for the Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to build an intuitive and durable platform for virtual appointments that could interoperate seamlessly with the hospital’s EHRs. The Microsoft Teams EHR connector is available for both Epic and Cerner customers. 

”Before COVID-19, we offered only in-person appointments and phone consultations, but we were piloting Teams and another system for video consultations,” says Martin van den Oudenhoven, ICT Project Leader at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital. “Based on the experience, fast implementation time, and the fact that our clinicians were already familiar with Microsoft 365, Teams was the right choice.” 

ETZ plans to expand and implement its Teams EHR integration in its other care units that require video consultations by the end of the summer.

Modernizing healthcare, streamlining communication

COVID-19 wasn’t ETZ’s only driver for virtual appointments, but it did demonstrate the need for a dependable, intuitive, and easy-to-use communications platform for patients and clinicians. With the Microsoft Teams EHR connector for Epic, ETZ clinicians can make appointments with patients through the hospital’s Epic EHR system that include Teams meeting links in appointment confirmation emails. Clinicians can work easily and seamlessly in Teams meetings with their Epic contacts, taking notes during consultations that they can then share with other care team members. “We used Teams to help build a fully integrated solution so that clinicians can document virtual patient consultations without having to start up other systems,” says Ceasar van Eeden, Application Analyst at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital.

The hospital uses Teams to ease and encourage communication and collaboration between the departments, care teams, and colleagues at three different hospital sites. “With Teams, we no longer need to waste time and effort commuting only to meet and consult with colleagues,” says Van den Oudenhoven.

Keeping the focus on care

For Pettie Maas-van Son, a Reproductive Fertility Physician at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital, Teams is a valuable tool to deliver crucial, timely care for expecting parents. Maas-van Son’s work in fertility means frequent touchpoints with at least two participants on the patient side. “On any call, we might have the couple, a donor, and other specialists like a urologist or gynecologist,” she says. “Getting multiple people in the same room for what might be a 20-minute consultation can be difficult in person.”

It was critical for ETZ that virtual appointments be as reliable and seamless as possible to fully approximate physical appointments and set up clinicians to provide the best possible care. “Having children is a very important moment in a person’s life, so meetings have to be held in a beneficial way,” says Maas-van Son. “With Teams, I can see my patients’ body language and get visual clues that indicate whether they have questions or concerns.”

Systems interoperability is also imperative to help ensure that all of a patient’s details are directly accessible during a consultation. Doctors can easily access patient records and other valuable data across Teams and Epic during appointments. “From a patient safety perspective, the integration of Teams and Epic is very useful,” Maas-van Son continues. “It allows me to access a patient’s file, and from there, click to connect to the patient’s complete information.”

More patients, less patience

In addition to quality of care, ETZ is enjoying tighter and more productive scheduling outcomes that benefit clinicians and patients alike and ease the burden on necessary physical consultations. “With physical appointments, the big bottleneck is the waiting room, where we have to distance people,” Maas-van Son observes. “Being able to schedule both virtual and physical meetings allows us to space things out, fill our calendars properly, and ultimately, schedule many more people.”

Patients enjoy the benefits of not having to travel, reduced wait times, and the peace of mind of having these often life-altering appointments in the comfort of their own spaces. Indeed, the ease of virtual appointments helps ensure that patients take full advantage of and get full access to the care they need. “Being in their own environments rather than traveling and wasting time sitting in waiting rooms makes a major difference for our patients,” Van den Oudenhoven says. “The greatest benefit is how we’ve used Teams to lower the threshold to care and make it possible for any patient to consult a physician, no matter their location or circumstance.”

Defining the future of healthcare

Its platform for virtual appointments is creating new prospects for ETZ to further innovate how it delivers care digitally. The hospital’s physicians are witnessing the benefits of the technology firsthand, and they’re using the tools to provide better care, exchange knowledge, and collaborate more seamlessly. “Teams makes it easy for physicians to have conversations across disciplines or regarding referrals,” says Marc Marinus, Online Communications Advisor at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital. “And several specialists are using recording functionality in Teams for educational and training purposes.”

ETZ has seen the value of delivering a useful, high-functioning solution that offers real advantages, gains broad usage, and helps drive better care outcomes. Accordingly, the hospital is exploring other solutions to fold more data and intelligence into healthcare. “We’re now looking at integrating patient devices into virtual appointments to monitor blood pressure, heart rhythm, or other vitals,” says Van Eeden. “We’re looking to see if we can input values from the devices into the patient portal, which could function as a backup for clinicians during video consultations.”