Experiences With Internet Triaging of 9498 Outpatients Daily at the Largest Public Hospital in Taiwan During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND During pandemics, acquiring outpatients’ travel, occupation, contact and cluster history is one of the most important measures to assess the risk of the incoming patient. Previous means to acquire the information at the examination room was insufficient to block the spread of the disease. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to demonstrate the deployment of an automatic triage system to triage outpatients through internet. METHODS An automatic system incorporated to the operating online registration form of the hospital was deployed along with its on-site counterpart. Automatic query to the VPN travel and contact history database with the patient’s National ID number was made for each attempt to acquire the patient’s travel and contact history. Patients with relevant histories were denied registration or entry. Text messages were sent to patients without relevant history for the expedited route of entry if applicable. RESULTS A total of 127857 visits was recorded. Among all visits, 91195 of them were registered online. Seventy-one-thousand, eight-hundred and sixteen of them received text messages for expedited route of entry. Sixty-five patients had relevant histories revealed by the VPN database and were denied of registration or entry. CONCLUSIONS An automatic system to acquire outpatients’ relevant travel and contact histories was deployed rapidly in one of the largest academic medical centers in Taiwan. The updated system successfully denied patients with relevant travel or contact histories to enter the hospital without forming long lines. Further efforts could be made to integrate the system with the electronic medical record system.