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NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center’s Emergency Department (ED) Telehealth Express Care Service has won the 2017 Emergency Care Innovation of the Year Award for its use of telemedicine to evaluate ED patients and dramatically decrease time spent in the ED, while maintaining a high degree of patient safety and satisfaction.

“This honor represents our commitment to delivering the finest emergency care and providing high-quality efficient care to our patients through continued innovation,” said Dr. Rahul Sharma, emergency physician-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine and an associate professor of clinical medicine and of clinical healthcare policy and research at Weill Cornell Medicine, who accepted the award with his colleagues.

Urgent Matters, Philips Blue Jay Consulting, and Schumacher Clinical Partners presented the award at the national American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Scientific Assembly on Oct. 28 in Washington, D.C. Urgent Matters is a national initiative managed by the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Policy Research at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, dedicated to strategies to improve patient flow and reduce ED crowding. Philips Blue Jay Consulting is an ED consulting service, and Schumacher Clinical Partners, a healthcare management services company.

The ED Telehealth Express Care Service at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, part of NewYork-Presbyterian’s digital suite of services, NYP OnDemand, allows patients already in the ED with non-life threatening conditions to visit virtually with a clinician and significantly reduce their wait time. After initial triage and an in-person medical screening exam, patients can elect to video-conference from a private room with board-certified emergency medicine physicians from Weill Cornell Medicine. ED Express Care has helped reduce ED wait times for such patients from two or three hours to approximately 35-40 minutes.

“We are so pleased to be recognized with this award as we continue to focus on expanding digital health care for our patients, and on improving patient experience and satisfaction,” said Daniel Barchi, senior vice president and chief information officer at NewYork-Presbyterian.

Launched in July 2016, more than 4,000 patients have used ED Express Care at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital. Other services offered by NYP OnDemand include Second Opinion, which provides another perspective on symptoms, diagnosis or treatment plan from the expert physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian through an easy-to-access online portal; Inter-hospital Consult, which connects physicians across NewYork-Presbyterian’s hospital sites through video-conferencing to collaborate on patient cases and provide their specialty insight; Digital Urgent Care, for patients with non-life threatening illnesses and injuries to access the urgent care service for rapid treatment through a live video visit; Virtual Visit, a convenient way to meet with a doctor without traveling to their office; and Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit, an emergency vehicle specially furnished to bring top-quality care to stroke victims as rapidly as possible, created in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center and the FDNY.

For more information on NewYork-Presbyterian’s ED Express Care Service, visit http://www.nyp.org/ondemand.