LINCOLN WINTER 2024
“You Can Be a Changemaker” Doctor Brings Telehealth Solutions to Women’s Practice
By Anna Quinn (United Hospital Fund)
I n the 14 years Manisha Jain, MD, has been an obstetrician and gynecologist at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln Women’s Health Center, one frustrating but unavoidable fact was the significant amount of time patients’ first pregnancy evaluation visits would take out of their day. Seen by a social worker, nutritionist, nurse, and doctor in that first visit, the patient often spent two hours getting through the appointment’s long checklist. That was until Dr. Jain, a fellow in United Hospital Fund and Greater New York Hospital Association’s Clinical Quality Fellowship Program, was inspired to find a solution. “I could witness it, I could complain about it, but CQFP taught me that, ‘Yes, you can be the changemaker,’” Dr. Jain said. “CQFP gave me a platform to do something about it.” Her first time Dr. Manisha Jain Photos with patient Mariatu Kanu and her newborn
leading a quality improvement initiative, Dr. Jain decided to tackle the long appointment times as her capstone project for the fellowship program. It didn’t take long to discover a timely remedy: telehealth. Despite other departments at Lincoln Hospital implementing telehealth options since the pandemic, the Women’s Health Center had found it difficult to adapt the video options to their specialty, much of which requires an in-person exam. But Dr. Jain saw an opportunity with the first-time patient visits. She decided to help shorten in-person visits by transferring the nurse, social worker, and nutritionist screenings—each of which were purely educational—to a virtual visit. The virtual appointment would be completed in the days before the in-person clinician examination, meaning patients had the flexibility to complete them at home, school, or work,
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