Turning Telehealth Into a Competitive Advantage for Healthcare Practices

Turning Telehealth Into a Competitive Advantage for Healthcare Practices

by | Healthcare, Industry - Healthcare, News, Newsletter

Telehealth is long past being just a pandemic workaround. It’s now a core part of how healthcare practices deliver care. But simply offering virtual visits isn’t enough. The real value comes from how well telehealth is built into everyday operations. If you want to see better results, you need to treat telehealth as part of the full patient experience. Here’s how to build telehealth into something that works for your healthcare practice.

Focus on the Full Patient Journey

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is treating telehealth as just the visit itself. Virtual care should be more than a video link. It should support the patient seamlessly through scheduling, intake, the visit, and then the follow-up. This means using tools that connect scheduling, intake forms, insurance eligibility, and documentation. This way, staff spend less time re-entering information, and patients spend less time repeating themselves.

For instance, intake work, such as questionnaires, consent forms, medication lists, and screening tools, should all be completed before the visit. When both patients and clinics are prepared ahead of time, the visit typically runs smoother, and staff can spend more time on patient care and less time on paperwork.

Insurance Eligibility Should Be Part of the Workflow

Eligibility issues, such as claim denials, are one of the biggest sources of billing problems. If you confirm coverage at the appointment rather than at the time of booking, you risk having claims denied or payments delayed. Scheduling eligibility coverage into the intake process helps staff to flag issues early, which helps avoid frustration for both your staff and your patients at appointment time.

Use Automation Where It Helps

Automation isn’t replacing phone-based appointment scheduling anytime soon, but it can support it. You’ll want to use systems that not only respond to patients, but also complete tasks such as booking appointments based on actual availability, applying cancellation rules, and confirming insurance details. This also helps staff manage their time more efficiently by freeing them up to focus on work that actually needs a human touch.

Track What Matters

Many practices measure telehealth performance by tracking visit counts and not much else. Here are the metrics worth watching:

  • How often telehealth visits are actually completed
  • How often patients are no-shows
  • How frequently insurance claims get denied
  • How much time staff save per patient
  • Is the technology working reliably, or are you needing to troubleshoot more often than not?

These metrics can help you form a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not. It’s helpful to run a pilot period of 60-90 days to test systems and make changes before rolling them out on a broader scale.

Create a Cross-Functional Telehealth Team

Both technology and teams need to be aligned for a seamless workflow. Think about creating a small telehealth operations group. This can include a clinical lead, a revenue lead, someone from the front desk, and IT support. This group “owns” the telehealth program. They can monitor performance, spot problems, and adjust workflow as needed. Creating this kind of team helps to keep a tight focus on telehealth, which can prevent small issues from turning into big problems.

Keep the Patient Experience Front and Center

As you implement telehealth more broadly, it’s important to keep in mind that not all patients have reliable internet access, some struggle with technology, some may need language support, and some might not be comfortable with video calls. You don’t want to create barriers for patients. Train staff to help patients who struggle with technology, and aim to create telehealth systems that are simple, mobile-friendly, and easy to access. And there should always be a backup plan for those who need it.

 

Why Health Practices Should Implement a Team-Based Care Model to Optimize Telemedicine and Streamline Efficiencies

Why Health Practices Should Implement a Team-Based Care Model to Optimize Telemedicine and Streamline Efficiencies

by | Healthcare, Industry - Healthcare, News

The Covid-19 pandemic propelled the healthcare industry into telemedicine almost overnight. Now, more than two years later, doctors and health care practices and organizations are able to take a breath and consider how to optimize virtual visits for patients and physicians. One way to do this is by implementing a physician-led team-based care approach much like the systems used for in-office visits.

What is Team-Based Care?

Team-based care is an orchestrated office system that allows doctors and other in-office professionals to work together to take care of a patient. They accomplish this by each professional bringing their strengths to the task at hand, and performing at the highest level of their skill set and training. When the pandemic hit, the hard-won workflow of these office systems reverted to a routine rooted in the past, where physicians alone carried out most of the work.

Why is Team-Based Care Important?

For many physicians and practices, the pandemic forced health care providers to pivot to telehealth before a team-based approach could be established, but a physician-does-all system is not sustainable in a telemedicine environment any more than it’s sustainable in an in-office environment. The benefits of team-based care include increased accessibility, improved quality of patient care, increased patient access to care, improved team efficiency, improved satisfaction among patients and physicians, and reduced burnout among professionals.

Team-Based Care Provides an Advocate for the Patient

When a medical assistant or nurse accompanies a physician in an exam room, they are serving partly as an advocate for the patient, and this can be true for telemedicine environments as well. The nurse or medical assistant on the virtual call can be sure that the physician has provided all the care that was needed in the context of that visit.

Team-Based Care Strengthens Trust with Patients

Trust is a crucial component of the patient-physician relationship. Adding another clinical staff member to that dynamic during a telemedicine visit gives the patient a chance to establish a trusting relationship with an additional medical professional. This person can be an added ear for the patient — someone else they can turn to with questions or concerns. Additionally, when a member of the clinical staff can take care of electronic health records and documentation, the physician is free to focus solely on the patient, which further solidifies the trust built between them.

How to Implement Team-Based Care

Successful team-based care approaches center the patient and promote strong written and verbal communication. Each care team member must be appointed a clearly-defined role in which they use their skills at the highest capacity. Organization leaders should also develop procedures for communicating information about the patient, ensuring that each team member has access to the data needed to make informed care decisions. Finally, be sure the patient understands that they have the support of a team by emphasizing each team member’s role with the patient.