PHSA’s
Office of Virtual Health collaborates with program partners to help bring health care even closer to home, by developing solutions for integrating Virtual Health into their models of care.
The Office of Virtual Health partnered on separate Virtual Health Visit projects with BC Women’s Hospital
Complex Chronic Diseases Program and
BC Cancer-Victoria. Patients were able to remain at home and use a personal electronic device (phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer) to consult with their provider via in-home video calling between patients and providers using the Skype for Business application.
BC Cancer-Victoria launched its Virtual Health Visit demonstration project in July 2018. Program evaluation shows the average patient experience score is 8 on a 1-10 scale, indicating high satisfaction.
Office of Virtual Health: We feel honoured, proud and grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with clinical programs and provide support to enable Virtual Health. By harnessing Virtual Health opportunities that align population needs with existing workflows, we are making a positive impact on the lives of patients.
It’s rewarding knowing that we saved patients hours and hours of strenuous travel. The patient feedback emphasizes the social-economic benefits that Virtual Health Visits provided the patients.
This year we enabled specialist care delivery to patients’ homes for the first time in PHSA history—and this is only the beginning. Our ambition is to drive adoption and support people to receive care and stay well whenever and wherever they need it.
BC Women’s Complex Chronic Diseases Program: We sincerely appreciate working with such an amazing team and wonderful patients and having the opportunity to do such rewarding and interesting work. We know this award comes with great prestige.
For our team, the reward comes from helping clients, getting great feedback from them, and allowing a space for our clients to tell their story and feel supported.
BC Cancer - Victoria: Our team is very excited about supporting patients to access care in a way that minimizes the burden of travel for them and their support network.
We’re proud of our strong partnership with the Office of Virtual Health in Vancouver. Despite the geographical distances of our teams, the project remained on schedule and on target. This is a prime example of how strategic collaboration, dedicated project management and support and operational commitment can accelerate system transformation by piloting tests of change.
The patient and physician evaluation results indicate that the Virtual Health visit technology delivers meaningful improvements to the experiences of patients and oncologists. With continuous evaluation and adaptation, we are excited for patient and staff experience to continue to improve and become more efficient.
