6-Step Checklist for a Successful Telemedicine Integration to Your Practice
Telemedicine is a great way to reach your patients, improve the quality of your services and lower the costs of healthcare. Now, it’s easy to get enticed with the possibilities telemedicine can bring to your practice; you are only a click away from your most remote patients.
The integration of telemedicine into your practice is an essential part of today’s medical care to help your patients achieve better health outcomes through access to care anytime-anywhere. You can realise the concept of care anywhere by implementing a telemedicine solution which in turn can play a vital role in reducing healthcare costs.
If you are planning to integrate a telemedicine solution into your practice, the following checklist will help you to initiate the process:
1. Have a plan on what you want to accomplish
To begin with, ask yourself these questions. What is the primary purpose of integrating telemedicine to your practice? What advantages do you want to gain by implementing a telemedicine solution? Do you want to acquire new patients?
If you want to add new patients, would they be the tech-savvy ones with busy diaries? Do you just want to use telemedicine only during off-hours? Asking yourself these questions would help you to decide who will be your patients and also the types of services that you can offer them.
2. Spread awareness among your patients
Before integrating telemedicine into your practice, make sure your existing patients know that you are going to offer telemedicine services. Educate them about how telemedicine works and also explain its benefits.
Apart from bringing this up with your patients during in-person visits, you can also consider publishing articles or blogs on your website or putting up signage in your practice.
3. Decide your usage
Deciding what you would like to use telemedicine for will help you choose the right telemedicine solution for your practice. You can start with simple services such as providing medication refills or postoperative care.
Later on you can move on to offering same-day appointments for emergency care, after-hours care, and long-term care like chronic disease management, etc.
4. Choose a telemedicine solution
Now, this is the most important part, choosing the right solution for your practice when you are already spoilt for choice. First thing to keep in mind is that the telemedicine solution is HIPAA-compliant and easy to use.
There are many free solutions available to begin with, however, you won’t be able to try out all of their features. Suppose, your patient wants to pay you online via the telemedicine platform, it won’t be possible for you to facilitate that unless you upgrade to a premium plan which might cost you nearly 29 USD.
However, there is one and only one telemedicine solution in the market that aims to empower small practices or solo practitioners — ZEBOC Care Anywhere. All its features are free to use including payments, HD video, unique practice url, text and email invites, and more.
5. Set up your teleconsulting space
Once you have made up your mind to integrate telemedicine into your practice, find a quiet and private space for teleconsulting. Preferably a neatly organized room with an adequate lighting and a door that you can close in order to protect your patient’s privacy.
Quiet space with appropriate lighting and a neutral background would eliminate all visual distractions and help your patients see you clearly during the teleconsultation.
6. Learn about regulations & coverage
Knowing your state regulations would be helpful for you in order to play it safe without breaching legal rules. Do you need to provide for informed consent? Do you need to limit the mode of telemedicine? Are you licensed in the patient’s state? These are just a few of those many questions that these rules might answer for you.
Also, it would be wise to learn about coverage and find out in advance what telemedicine services will be reimbursed by your payers.
Wrapping up
Telemedicine is a hot topic in the healthcare industry, but it can be confusing trying to figure out how or where it can fit in your practice. How telemedicine can help increase revenues and build bigger and better patient relationships.
Telemedicine can be of great benefit to both you and your patients. However, in order to reach your goals, it is advisable to consider the aforementioned 6-step checklist before implementing a telemedicine solution.
Would you like to add any other step to this checklist? Please feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment below.
