Aligning patient demand and testing capacity continues to be one of the most significant barriers to building a scalable care infrastructure as the country continues battling COVID-19. Uncertainty around where to get tested, confusion about the overall process, and a lack of clarity on cost lead to frustrated consumers that are in need of testing. Since the start of the pandemic, healthcare, community, and technology organizations have partnered with Solv to support a consumer-centric approach to COVID-19 testing:
1. Support broad access to testing
As states begin to reopen and public health and safety remain top concerns, eliminating disparities and improving access to COVID-19 care is paramount. To make it easier to find and book COVID-19 and antibody tests across the United States, both Castlight Health and the Urgent Care Association (UCA) are working with Solv to ensure patients have access to the largest and most up-to-date testing directory.
With Castlight, Solv aligns its bookable partners with Castlight’s comprehensive directory of testing sites across all 50 states — surpassing 1.3 million visitors to their Test Site Finder in the last three months.
On top of that, UCA’s partnership with Solv helps consumers easily identify care options by syncing its test database with Solv’s own COVID testing directory. In partnership with UCA, Solv’s directory is quickly approaching more than 2,000 urgent care clinics offering COVID-19 testing, providing a reliable source for consumers to access testing when and where they need it.
2. Help patients find their best care option
Face-to-face, in-person care is not always the best care, or even necessary. MultiCare Health System realized this first-hand as the largest community-based health system located near ground zero of the pandemic. When the United States’ first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Seattle, which quickly became one of the country’s first hotspots, MultiCare’s senior leadership team was faced with two main challenges: caring for a concerned community and fast-tracking symptomatic patients.
For the majority of the community who were “worried well” and did not require direct interaction with a provider, MultiCare launched complementary virtual care access and FAQ documentation to provide reliable information in real time. To address upstream triage, MultiCare partnered with Solv to deploy a COVID-19 symptom assessment bot that provides informational resources and best practices, as well as direct access to providers for virtual consultations and guidance.
3. Streamline testing for patients (and providers)
Patient-centered care creates residual benefits for providers as well, proven by Solv’s partnership with the City of Seattle, University of Washington Medicine, and U.S. Digital Response. To support scalable testing and contact tracing, the companies overhauled the testing process and launched multiple testing sites across the Greater Seattle area.
As a result, the city increased its testing and processing capacity to 2,000 tests per day. In order to efficiently match such high patient volume, the City of Seattle also had to streamline testing processes for both patients and providers. Solv’s queuing system allows patients to book ahead to equalize demand and prevent testing sites from becoming inundated—not to mention, paperless pre-registration to collect patient details in advance. The result: a better patient experience and more efficient providers.
Democratizing COVID-19 testing with a consumer-centric approach focused on easy and convenient access is a key safeguard against minimizing outbreaks and protecting the most vulnerable populations. Whether at a city, state, or national level, it is critical, now more than ever, for health and technology leaders to work together to develop scalable and sustainable models for testing and contact tracing that put consumers first.
How has COVID-19 affected your practice, your passion for medicine, or your patient relationships? We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts to [email protected] — we’ll be featuring the most impactful stories in future newsletters.
