Rapid development of telehealth capabilities within pediatric patient portal infrastructure for COVID-19 care: barriers, solutions, results

TLDR

The COVID‑19 emergency has driven a surge in care demand, prompting rapid telehealth expansion that is particularly complex for pediatric patients. This report outlines a pathway for quickly scaling remote pediatric enrollment in telehealth while addressing privacy, security, and convenience concerns. The process was designed and implemented in two days, establishing five key requirements—efficient enrollment, remote parentage verification, minimal additional work, adherence to adolescent autonomy guidelines, and compliance with institutional privacy and security policies. Weekly enrollment rose tenfold for children and 1.2‑fold for adolescents, while telehealth visits increased 200‑fold for children and 90‑fold for adolescents, offering guidance for similar challenges in future crises.

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 national emergency has led to surging care demand and the need for unprecedented telehealth expansion. Rapid telehealth expansion can be especially complex for pediatric patients. From the experience of a large academic medical center, this report describes a pathway for efficiently increasing capacity of remote pediatric enrollment for telehealth while fulfilling privacy, security, and convenience concerns. The design and implementation of the process took 2 days. Five process requirements were identified: efficient enrollment, remote ability to establish parentage, minimal additional work for application processing, compliance with guidelines for adolescent autonomy, and compliance with institutional privacy and security policies. Weekly enrollment subsequently increased 10-fold for children (age 0–12 years) and 1.2-fold for adolescents (age 13–17 years). Weekly telehealth visits increased 200-fold for children and 90-fold for adolescents. The obstacles and solutions presented in this report can provide guidance to health systems for similar challenges during the COVID-19 response and future disasters.