Virtual Community Health Workers: Approaches to Patient Outreach During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Publication/Presentation Date
1-1-2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, community health workers (CHWs) in our health system screened patients in-person for social determinants of health and connected them to community resources. However, when our CHWs were required to work remotely from home due to the pandemic, the best platform to optimize contacting these patients was unknown. This study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of three outgoing phone call approaches (*67, Google Voice®, and Doximity Dialer®) in successfully contacting patients.
METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis comparing reach rates across the three outgoing call approaches.
RESULTS: Reach rates were highest when Doximity Dialer was used (64.0%, 95% CI: 58.8-69.0) compared with *67 (40.8%, 95% CI: 30.8-51.6) or Google Voice (53.2%, 95% CI: 48.4-57.8) in this analysis of 1,144 outreach calls.
CONCLUSION: Due to higher reach rates, we recommend Doximity Dialer for phone-based outreach to patients. Additional research to improve the efficacy of remote outreach is warranted.
Volume
33
Issue
1
First Page
213
Last Page
220
ISSN
1548-6869
Published In/Presented At
Fish, A. M., Romano, E., Ostroff, P., Ziring, D., George, B., Frasso, R., & Hayden, G. (2022). Virtual Community Health Workers: Approaches to Patient Outreach During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, 33(1), 213–220. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2022.0016
Disciplines
Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Health and Medical Administration | Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods
PubMedID
35153215
Department(s)
Administration and Leadership
Document Type
Article