"With Metriport, we improved our referral-to-appointment time from up to 2 weeks to under 24 hours! What significantly changed for us was being able to get hospital records in seconds, which drastically added value to the post-hospital visit."
I’ve been building programs for Michigan hospitals for over 10 years. When I pitched the idea for BridgeCare, it was the first pitch of mine that they declined, as they didn’t believe virtual care would take off. This was ironic, since it was just as COVID started to hit in early 2020, so once it came into full swing, that propelled the movement. I didn’t expect the pandemic to accelerate virtual care as much as it did, but it lined up perfectly with me leaving the system and starting BridgeCare. We’re bridging the forgotten gap between hospitals and primary care, and helping people who had no access to care previously.
In our space, the average office takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to onboard a patient, at best! We knew from day one that this wouldn’t work for us, since the patients we work with are at the highest risk within the first 2 weeks after discharge. This means we need to see the patient within the first 3 days of them getting home, which was extraordinarily difficult starting out. We literally had to call the hospital and beg them to fax us the reports, which was a huge pain point that led us to look for an alternative solution for patient record retrieval.
With Metriport, we improved our referral-to-appointment time from up to 2 weeks to under 24 hours! What significantly changed for us was being able to get hospital records in seconds, which drastically added value to the post-hospital visit. The majority of our previous visits without Metriport were without the full records, so we were only as knowledgeable as the patient could remember, or what we could piece together by contacting the hospital directly. This enabled us to be more accurate with where exactly the hospital left off, knowing what they did, which helped improve the patient's health literacy and follow through.
Metriport has allowed us to start pulling all the records we need for our patients ahead of appointments. We’re able to get all the documents we need, check patient insurance to see if it’s still active, and generate medical summaries to be reviewed by our physician team, all from a few clicks on the Dashboard. Once our patients’ records are reviewed virtually, we’re able to treat the patient and provide recommended next steps. This entire process has enabled us to deliver the highest quality virtual care, without delay.
Metriport has enabled us to provide our service in a meaningful way that puts us at a 2% all-cause readmission rate. When you compare this to the national average — which is between 9-35%, depending on diagnosis and risk factors — this is phenomenal! This is largely due to the fact that we’re able to get all the records we need for our patients in seconds through Metriport, along with their exceptional patient coverage across Michigan and the US.
Since we started using Metriport in 2023, we’ve seen 95% coverage across the board for our patient population. This is significantly better than a competitive solution we had used previously, where we saw around 80% coverage and paid more per query. Metriport’s cost-effective approach has enabled us to transform our business and continue to lead in the virtual discharge space.
Metriport also enables us to share encounter notes from our system with other providers in Michigan. By uploading C-CDAs to Metriport, we’re able to make the latest encounter information for our patients available to future providers who will see our patients, keeping them in-the-know on their care journey, regardless of which EHR they use.
Metriport continues to allow us to expand our operations and see more patients. Right now we’re working on some initiatives with home health partners, and a huge value prop is that we allow them to take the technology they need to go into the home and provide high quality virtual care. Metriport is a core part of this, helping us review more patient charts sooner. There’s typically an overwhelming amount of information in home health, but Metriport helps us make sense of this and get the most up-to-date, recent, and accurate patient information available.
