Managing patients in the COVID-19 pandemic: A Virtual Multidisciplinary Approach

Ganesh, Ravindra; Salonen, Bradley R.; Bhuiyan, M Nadir; Bierle, Dennis M.; Moehnke, Darcie; Haddad, Tufia C.; Tande, Aaron J.; Wilson, John; Hurt, Ryan T.

Objective To study the impact of a 60-day pilot of an innovative virtual care model using General Internal Medicine physicians and nurses to rapidly respond to over 1200 COVID-19 positive nasopharyngeal PCR tests. Patients and Methods The current study was approved by the Mayo Clinic COVID-19 Research Committee and the Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board. The data for all SARS-CoV-2 positive patients treated by our team were entered into a prospectively maintained internal REDCap database. We retrospectively searched this database for the first 60 days of our program(March 23, 2020 until May 22, 2020). The data included basic deidentified demographics, symptoms at intake into the program, date of symptom onset, risk factors, location, and outcomes including hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. Results Patients were contacted on average 6.3 hours after their results became available. There was a total of 138 ED visits. Of these, 40% were admitted to the hospital, with 36% of those admitted requiring ICU level of care. Of the 849 patients in this sample, there were only 2 deaths (0.23%) at 60 days. Conclusion Our innovative multidisciplinary COVID team provided excellent clinical care for patients with COVID with a very low mortality rate compared to the national average. While data is not available on a national scale for time to contact patient, our team was able to contact patients within the established recommendation for contact within 48 hours of testing is optimal.