The term telehealth describes a method of remote healthcare utilizing telecommunications technology. This may include everything from a telephone call to a video chat between patient and healthcare provider. Telehealth has been a successful practice since before the COVID-19 pandemic, but enforced quarantine certainly caused an uptick in its use. Today, telehealth makes healthcare more accessible to those who would not otherwise be able to receive treatment, and successful telehealth can be achieved by taking conscious and deliberate steps.

Strategies for Both Patients and Healthcare Facilities

Both patients and providers have a part in creating a successful telehealth session. These include a good setup and being present during the process.

Find the Right Spot

In order to have a successful telehealth session, it is important to set the scene. Neither patient nor provider should be distracted, so both parties must find quiet spots that allow them to work undisturbed. Make sure things in the background (posters, pets, equipment, etc.) won’t be distracting. The ideal spot has good lighting if the telehealth session will be conducted over video conference.

Quality equipment 

While neither party needs to create a recording studio, making sure you use quality cameras and sound equipment can mitigate the frustration of poor audio or video quality. This lends itself to better care and overall more successful telehealth since neither party has to worry about the sound or picture cutting out. You may also choose to use headphones or earbuds to block out background noise.

Secure Internet Connection

Sufficient bandwidth is essential for a telehealth session to be successful. The fanciest camera on the market cannot save a telehealth session if the internet goes out. Delays, lost information, and severe frustration are only a few of the side effects of a faulty connection. Minimize other internet uses during a session for best results. Practices may even have a dedicated wifi just for telehealth calls.

Keep Relevant Information Close

The middle of a telehealth session is not the time to try to find pertinent medical records, and sifting through your medicine cabinet is not a good use of the appointment’s allotted time. Instead, have relevant information at hand before the session begins. Healthcare professionals will have a list of questions ready, and patients may feel free to do so as well. 

To receive the best care possible without a medical provider in the room, patients should also keep a list of medications ready, for providers will ask for them. Have an explanation of your symptoms ready, especially if you have experienced difficulty performing routine activities. If you have the metrics of your vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and weight) taken within the last 24 hours, those are helpful to have onhand.

Stay Engaged

Incorporating telehealth successfully into a practice means we all need a little coaching on our web-side manner. During a telehealth session, both parties should remain attentive, keep eye contact, and ask good questions. Healthcare workers should adopt a professional tone and explain the telehealth process systematically and clearly. Patients should repeat any instructions given to them to ensure they have them correct.

A good web-side manner isn’t just about demeanor. Apparel also comes into play. Both patient and provider should wear solid colors since patterns can show up differently on screen, playing with the eyes and tricking them into seeing movement. In addition to scrubs, medical professionals should consider wearing their lab coats while on the call to inspire confidence.

Keep good notes

Both patients and providers should have questions beforehand and make sure to cover them during the appointment. Healthcare professionals should let patients know that they will be taking notes so patients do not feel like physicians are not paying attention.

Make Plans to Follow-Up

Many telehealth sessions lead to follow-up appointments, whether via technology or in-person. Establish the necessary next steps before the call ends. Doing so will allow both parties to walk away understanding what comes next.

Successful Telehealth Practices for Medical Facilities

If telehealth is an option offered at your practice, you have an additional responsibility to use the technology wisely.

Offer Multiple Platforms

Medical facilities should offer telehealth on multiple platforms to best reach the maximum number of clients. This is a failsafe against some IT problems. There are many online communication systems on the market. Zoom is taking the world by storm, but FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and other platforms are available for use. Find the best combination for your practice.

Prepare the Patient

To have a successful telehealth session, let the patient know what to expect. Consent must be properly documented, and be sure to let patients know they have the right to stop at any time. Make sure patients understand the billing process for telehealth before the session.

Follow protocol

In terms of getting to the root of a patient’s problem and offering treatment solutions, telehealth sessions are the same as in-office visits. Adhere to proper protocols to give the best care while avoiding legal and billing difficulties.

Maintain Privacy

Prioritizing privacy is crucial for successful telehealth. This involves keeping the room in which telehealth calls take place secure. Conversations should remain confidential in the same way in-facility visits are. If other practitioners or staff are in the room, be sure to notify the patient.

They say that nothing succeeds like success. With that in mind, how can you create a successful medical practice that continues on an upward trend? The most important thing a practice can do is provide quality care. From there, we offer a few suggestions on how to elevate any medical facility. The success of a medical practice is achieved through internal and external strategies: practice management and marketing.

Practice Management

As already mentioned, the foundation for a successful medical practice is quality patient care. That goal is augmented by providing excellent customer service, keeping records up-to-date and organized, and basing procedures and practice management on defined and achievable goals.

It’s All About People

The people in an organization make all the difference between a successful medical practice and an unsuccessful one. Surround your practice with successful people and teams, those who know their business and have a drive to improve and elevate their work environment. Remember that patients are the lifeblood of a practice, so give each one the best care possible. 

Communication Is Key

Listen when patients explain their symptoms and challenges. While an attending physician may know pretty quickly how to help, patients do not want to feel that they are being shuffled along as part of an assembly line. Patient treatment is improved when healthcare professionals remember that people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Patients are more likely to develop loyalty with a business or practice if that practice communicates with them in the manner most convenient for the patient. The most successful medical practices have many methods at hand to relay information to their patients. These may include texts, calls, emails, signage around the facility, and notifications on the practice’s website and on social media.

Embrace Delegation 

Healthcare providers are able to provide the best healthcare when they can focus on doing so. Have staff dedicated to administrative work so doctors and nurses can focus on diagnosing, chart prep, blood work, and prescribing treatment. Delegation can also help minimize the risk of burnout among staff. 

Outsourcing your medical billing is a help strategy for building a successful medical practice for two reasons. Doing so allows medical staff to focus on what they are best at: providing patient care. It lends an outlet so healthcare workers do not need to spend valuable time sifting through billing information or “dead claims.” Outsourcing the billing also gives a practice plenty of space to grow. 

Resource Management

Use your resources correctly and wisely. Stay on top of current research and emerging technologies, and implement these in a way that your practice can support. This may include online or over-the-phone treatment options, like telehealth. These solutions make healthcare more accessible across the world.

Wisely managing available resources also includes the space in your clinic. Do you have a room that is not being used? Perhaps more storage space would be more valuable as another treatment room or a space to analyze tests. Maximize the resources you already have.

Follow the Money

Successful medical practices always have a budget and work within them wisely. Have a plan for every expenditure and be mindful of the inventory you already have. Make sure that every piece of your practice’s medical equipment is being used effectively to generate business and revenue.

Marketing

If you want to build a successful medical practice, have good marketing strategies. This may seem an odd priority for a medical practice, which should never be confused with a fortune 500 company, but it remains very important for medical practices to build their loyal patient base. In our digital age, over 72% of Americans begin their search for healthcare providers online. Your online presence should be easy to find, easy to navigate, and easy to understand. 

First Impressions

In both your in-person facilities and your online content, walk through and try to see it through the eyes of a patient. Is the layout pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate? Is there any technical jargon that a layman must decipher? Does your physical location speak of professionalism, competence, and compassion? Does the waiting room put patients at ease? You only get one shot at a first impression, so make sure that yours reflects well on your practice.

Know Your Audience

In the marketing material you put out, know your audience. Direct your content toward potential patients, other physicians, insurance companies, etc. and be consistent. With all the content you produce, work toward the goal of gaining new patients.

The goal of most enterprises is to expand. It is a token of success and allows a business to reach more people. The process, however, isn’t always easy. If you are looking to expand your medical practice, consider these suggestions.

Be Accessible Online

We live in a digital world. This was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we continue to shift in that direction. If you want to expand your medical practice, it must be able to keep up with online methods. Patients have come to expect this online accessibility, with up to 78% reported to want contactless healthcare care options instead of traditional in-person, paper-based processes.

Navigating this digital landscape will include a variety of readily available services. These may include online self-scheduling for appointments, digital intake forms, and access to personal insurance and medical information, all of which improve the convenience of accessing a medical practice, for both patient and practice.

Patients also appreciate ready access to their medical billing information. Using Aspen Ridge Medical’s billing process allows patients to get real-time figures regarding their medical finances, and it provides practices with updated billing and payment information, allowing the practice to focus on providing excellent care.

The Power of the People

Word-of-mouth is still an excellent and one of the most powerful ways to expand your medical practice. In this day and age, those word-of-mouth recommendations are exchanged online. This includes patients sharing their recommendations online with both people they know, through social media, and people they do not through online reviews.

Especially if patients are new to an area, Google is often the first place they look to research medical practices in the area. This entails scouring through online reviews before choosing a physician. Data indicates that the vast majority of patients consider a positive online reputation very important when selecting their preferred medical practice.

If your patients are analyzing your online reviews, you had better do the same if you want to expand your medical practice or even maintain current patient volumes. Look at online reviews to see what kind of impression your practice creates before people even see the building, and while it may not initially feel like it, you have a lot of control over the response to your reviews.

Take patient’s concerns seriously. In your practice’s negative online reviews, look for trends. If certain complaints come up regularly (long wait times, confusing billing practices, terrible waiting room music), take steps to correct these issues. On review sites that make it possible to comment on patient’s reviews, respond to both recommendations and complaints with courtesy and proactivity. This will increase patients’ and prospective patients’ confidence that you are mindful of their concerns and good at listening in general.

Increasing the number of good reviews floating around the internet can certainly help expand your medical practice. You can encourage reviews from your regular patients by posting signage with links to your review page or QR codes to surveys. You can also send this access in reminder texts and emails for appointments or prescription refills.

Digital Marketing

Reviews are not the only aspect of an online presence that should reflect well on your practice. Functionality of your website, availability of social media accounts, and the design of both play a big role in the first impression your practice makes. Monitoring these can be a full-time job, which is why we recommend delegating the process to a professional digital marketing team if you want to expand your medical practice. In this way, healthcare practices can focus on providing quality healthcare to patients and let professionals in the marketing realm manage the practice’s online presence.

A professional digital marketing team can also track the metrics of your practice’s online presence: how many people search for it, access the site, share the site’s content, etc. This will give you a clear picture of what is working in your online approach so you can keep doing what works and stop doing what doesn’t.

Until Next Time

Be on-the-ball about scheduling return appointments at the end of each appointment. While this may feel like an obvious suggestion, it is a task that is easily missed. However, scheduling the next appointment before a patient leaves shows that patient that he or she is valued by your practice. People appreciate clear instructions moving forward, so having a next appointment set gives clarity and indicates a level of commitment and dedication that will only strengthen your practice’s overall patient loyalty.

Many Hands

If you are ready to expand your medical practice in a more dramatic way, consider increasing the size of your team. Employing more staff can minimize patient wait times and free up physicians to provide more focused care. If you have the means (personnel-wise) and the demand for it, consider expanding the type of care you offer. In addition to the general or specialized care you already provide, you may choose to include services that cater to metal or behavioral health as well.