Guide to Making telehealth Shine
Online

Make sure your website and social media channels clearly present and explain the striking benefits of telehealth.  Telehealth is not a second string solution.  It is something of great added value, giving convenient, stigma-free and private access to patients, creating a workable way to treat children and who may resist trips to the office, or older adults who may find it physically difficult to travel. 

Successful telehealth is offered as 21st century healthcare, a service you are happy to offer to your valued patients.

A well-designed site welcomes patients to your telehealth offering, and to your practice as whole.  Your website, like your physical office is carefully designed to show empathy, comfort, and authority patients can trust.

The user experience on a site might include explainer videos, role-playing a telehealth session, for example.

Consider integrating your telehealth offering itself, or a link to it, into a page on your website. Since the website is in today’s world, your online office, the design should welcome the patient back to the website even when telehealth sessions are not on the schedule.  

Patient portals are now common among larger outpatient clinics and hospitals, but some or all of these services can be provided by smaller or individual practitioners. 

Speak to a healthcare specialized web developer about simple technology to:

• Allows patients HIPAA-compliant communication

• Receive prescription refill requests

• Communicate test results and summaries of previous visits

• Schedule appointments or request appointment reminders

The goal is to move away from telehealth as a 45-minute once weekly exercise.
Increasingly, consumers expect ongoing interaction with the practice they depend on. For example, a blog can contribute strongly to patient attraction, retention, referrals, and return. Published on your social media site, your telehealth offering builds awareness and reputation.

Before launch, when onboarding new staff, make sure staff all stakeholders in your practice are familiar and comfortable with the workflow and technology.  This goes for staff, financial and legal support, and vendors among others.

Example: how are data from telehealth sessions ported into your EHR? At launch, and for new patient-facing staff, consider practice sessions, as recommended by the AMA in its highly valuable Telehealth Implementation Playbook.

It may be useful to hire writers to create talking points for staff.  Written case studies can paint a vivid picture of a typical telehealth session, both for internal staff and prospective patients.

A confident staff will make for a more confident and forthcoming patient.

Your aim is to give the patient confidence and familiarity with their telehealth experience.  A video or graphical explainer can go far to achieve this.  On your website prominently describe the kind of private environment the patient will need, and the total confidentiality of the session.  Familiarity is the key word...the more a patient is comfortable and familiar with the environment, the more open is he or she to interactions.  

These confidence-builders cannot be buried two or three clicks away.  If most or all of your sessions will be virtual, this becomes a must-have.

There are two approaches to the technology you use to communicate, and, yes it matters.   

Thought and investigation are called for.  Ask colleagues about their own experience with their platforms.  If you choose a more comprehensive system (see below), company reps will be happy to give a demo, and work with you.

First: stand alone video conferencing, like Zoom, combined with familiar software for appointment reminders (such as email!), note-taking, claim-filing, and of course an EHR or EMR.

It is still very possible to create an effective telehealth workflow with a combination of commonly-used software. This can include Zoom or other video conferencing software along with other separate applications. Some practitioners find that this gives patients and staff immediate familiarity with the service.

Note that the HIPAA-compliant Zoom for Healthcare will mean significant additional charges compared to its consumer service. 

Nonetheless, as of the middle of 2020, Zoom was the most used telehealth platform for individual and small practices.  We have not found data for 2021 as yet.

In this approach, integration with your EMR or EHR would, of course, need to be manual. 

Some practices lean to the personal oversight and accountability of manual input. For a small or individual practice this may make more sense.

It must be pointed out, however, that with the complex workflows specific to behavioral health, introducing a new manual piece must be done with care, and optimally with professional help.

Second: Dedicated telehealth systems

Dedicated telehealth platforms are now widely available, often optimized for a particular practice or patient demographic.

It is not our purpose here to recommend any particular platform, but only to show the breadth of opportunity now only emerging as telehealth so rapidly expands. (Note: Hungry Monster LLC never receives compensation for the mention of any product or service.)

Many dedicated telehealth services are fully integrated into EHR or EHM systems, such as the small-practice-friendly simplepractice and the comprehensive Kareo platform.  Some boast free versions, such as the well-known doxy.me service. Thera-link caters to the individual to mid-size practice. vSee states it is especially designed for areas of poor internet service.

If choosing a more comprehensive platform like these, look for:

With surveys, phone calls, and exit interviews, find out what works and keep it. Find out what didn’t work and change or discard it.  

Then use survey and outcomes data (within HIPAA guidelines of course) to reach out to potential partners and referrers.  

Tracking your success can energize healthcare marketing, including on social media. Content Marketing is especially effective over the long haul.