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    One Year Later, Connect Care Keeps Getting Better

    One Year Later, Connect Care Keeps Getting Better

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    Since then, Connect Care has seen thousands of patients, and we’ve learned a lot and improved the processes and safety guidelines to ensure you get the best care possible for your condition.
     

    Who is using Connect Care?

    • Women use Connect Care more often than men – 67% to 33% respectively.
    • Adults between ages 36-64 use Connect Care more often that 18-35 year olds. Meanwhile, the oldest patient to have used it is 100 years old!
    • Over 80% of visits are conducted on mobile devices.
    • Almost half of our visits come from 10 cities.
    • Over 10% of our patients have used the system more than once.

    How are we keeping Connect Care safe?

    • Providers: Over 80% of all visits are provided by Intermountain Healthcare providers. Our clinical partner provides care for visits outside of Utah and Idaho, and balances our volume to ensure an average wait time of 7 minutes or less.
    • Care Guidelines: As Medical Director, I’ve worked with Urgent Care and Pediatric experts to develop and approve clinical guidelines that help ensure the safe diagnosis and treatment of:
      • Common cold
      • Cough & bronchitis
      • Ear pain
      • Fever
      • Low back pain
      • Painful urination
      • Red eye
      • Sinus pain and pressure
      • Sore throat
      • Any many others

    See if Connect Care is right for your symptoms here: https://intermountainhealthcare.org/campaigns/is-connect-care-right-for-me/

    • Diagnosis: While the vast majority of our patients receive a diagnosis during their Connect Care visit, some patients require in-person care – we want to make sure, above all, that you are safely cared for.  The good news is, if we can’t take care of you and need to immediately refer you, we won’t charge you for the Connect Care visit.
    • Medical Record: Visit notes for Connect Care are available to your regular Intermountain doctor on your medical record, helping to ensure continuity of care between online and in-person visits.
    • Payer Coverage: Connect Care, which costs $49 no matter your insurance, is now covered by SelectHealth and an additional 3 payers (estimated at ~720,000 lives) – and some of these plans offer lower copays. Contact your insurance provider, or go to https://intermountainhealthcare.org/c/connect-care/ and scroll down to the bottom, to see if your plan offers coverage.

    How are we making Connect Care even easier to use?

    • Point of Care Testing: We recently launched a pilot that enables you to go to an Intermountain Lab or Pharmacy for a rapid strep test and conveniently have a prescription waiting for you if the test is positive. This helps ensure we’re only prescribing antibiotics when they’re really needed, without having to send you to in-person care if you have a suspected bacterial throat infection. While this is only available in a few select locations for now, we’re working to increase that availability to more patients soon.

    Thank you for your support of Connect Care over the past year. We’ve learned a lot and look forward to continuing to improve this service for you and your family. Start by downloading the Connect Care app now.