5. Rolling out Physitrack Telehealth in your clinic
Telehealth can become an integral part of your practice. With a few simple additions to your current practice workflow, Physitrack Telehealth can open up new windows of opportunity for both you and your patients.
Go on, why not let the internet world in to your daily healthcare practice?
1. Identify who would benefit
It may seem a strange idea, carrying out healthcare appointments over video, rather than in person. But when you think about your daily practice, how much of your time is spent educating clients, versus hands on treatment? For many of your clients, simply juggling work or family commitments to get into clinic can be a goal in itself. For others, the logistics of leaving the house to attend a clinic appointment prevents them from seeking treatment.
At Physitrack we've researched this. Those clinicians already performing Telehealth appointments have identified some of the following groups of people as benefitting most from this style of treatment:
- Carers of young children. Telehealth has enabled this population to link up with their clinician from home, removing the need to organise childcare for a face to face appointment.
- Busy employees unable to leave work can now attend on their lunch break through their mobile phone.
- Those particularly restricted who struggle to attend medical appointments due to disability or frailty can receive care at home.
2. Why incorporate Telehealth into your clinic?
No doubt you already run a busy, successful clinic, so why bother with the effort of doing things differently? The reality is don’t! Providing Telehealth is an additional service that you can provide for your patients. You probably went into a healthcare profession because of your desire to help people and provide them with the best possible care. The more flexible you can be with your time, the more people will gain from your expertise.
From a business perspective, Telehealth appointments do not require a treatment room. Your clinicians can conduct Telehealth appointments from the office, or even from home! You can employ more staff without having the logistic of increasing treatment space.
3. Telehealth implementation tips.
To help you start the ball rolling with integrating a Telehealth service into your clinic, we've posed a few questions for you with suggestions on how to solve them. As with a lot in life, it’s best to break things down into bite sized chunks.
- Begin by setting aside one clinician for only a couple of hours or a half day a week.
- What sort of appointments will you treat first? Perhaps start out with follow-up appointments. This removes the issue of new patient registration, and allows you to establish your admin routine for your Telehealth appointments.
- Who will book these sessions? You may want your clinician to control this, or perhaps your reception team.
- What system will be used? Your current practice management system may be the best way to organise your Telehealth sessions. Ideally stick with the same diary management method you use with your face to face appointments.
- How much will you charge for these sessions? Set your practice management system up to categorise Telehealth appointments.
- How will payment be taken? Use the billing function on your practice management system and take credit card details during the call set-up.
- How long will these appointments be? Utilise shorter 15 minute appointment for quick follow-ups or program adjustments, 30 minute sessions may incorporate more comprehensive follow-up assessments with treatment. Longer sessions for new patient appointments.
- Post-discharge appointments 2-3 months later, can be an excellent adjunct to treatment and a confidence booster to the patient. It also allows you as the clinician to refresh the patient of any techniques or advice they may have forgotten.
Once you have a rhythm of how your Telehealth service will run, you can start to evolve your system. You may begin to carry out initial assessments for simple post-operative patients, then develop further down the line into more complex new patient appointments. You may wish to look into treatment packages such as pre-payment of 5 appointments with 2 Telehealth follow-up sessions free!