Telehealth (or telemedicine) is completely changing the healthcare landscape and how practices offer essential services to their patients. By using telehealth, medical practices of all types and sizes can maintain patients’ health needs from anywhere, while generating more revenue and keeping costs down. And studies even show that telehealth is the type of service that patients increasingly prefer.
Get started with your telehealth plan by following the easy steps below:
Organize Your Goals for Your Practice
You should plan for and consider some key factors when moving toward a telemedicine program to ensure the transition is easy and successful. You should consider things like revenue, customer satisfaction, wait times, no-shows and cancellations, staff efficiency, patient retention, new patients, and any other measurements that are important for your practice.
Find the Right Partner
There are a lot of telehealth technology options available, but you will want to make sure you include things like:
- HIPAA-compliance
- Availability in your state
- Automated appointment booking and reminders
- Secure video and file sharing
- Branding for your business
You need to choose a technology that enables your practice to deploy an easy-to-use virtual platform for a small investment. Just because you want to become more modernized, doesn’t mean you need to pay an arm and a leg!
Train Your Staff
Once you select your telehealth platform, you will want to train your staff and get them up to speed on the software. You may want to designate a few key employees who can become immersed in the process and teach others about how it works. Or you may want to designate specific roles to each employee and assign them features that will be part of their job duties (for example, your receptionist is responsible for the appointment scheduling portion while your office manager is responsible for the billing portion).
You can also easily test out the appointment feature with your staff so all of you are comfortable with the virtual platform.
Launch the Platform on Your Website
Whether you do a formal announcement or just add a link to your site, you will need to make the service available to your patients online. We recommend you add a link to the homepage, so it is easily accessible.
Release an Announcement to Your Current Patients and Market to Potential New Patients
You can do this by either emailing your current patients (if your records include email addresses) or you can add a banner image to your site. You will also want to post this update to your social media sites, as well. Any way you can spread the word!
While telehealth may be a new addition to your everyday practices, you may find that it is a very welcome option to ensure your patients receive the care they need. You will be more able to treat even more patients with ease.
To learn more about telehealth and video appointments, please contact us at AudiologyPlus!
