More than ever before, practices are advantageous to capitalize on telehealth integration. This strategic imperative upholds a level of efficiency that ensures healthy clinical and financial outcomes—beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
Telemedicine integration yields many benefits that support quality care coordination. More than a buzz word, it’s the embodiment of efficiency in the new era of healthcare.
What is telehealth integration?
Telehealth integration with the electronic health record and practice management systems (EHR/PM), patient experience platforms, and other core technologies ensures data is available throughout the patient/provider experience.
Integrated telehealth enables:
- Virtual visit scheduling in your practice management system
- Automatically generated appointment reminder emails and SMS notifications
- Notifications in your EHR/PM when the patient is ready to see you
- Information, such as visit duration, intake responses and consent to flow back to the patient’s chart where the documentation would be handled as you normally would
See telehealth success stories from a variety of specialties.
So how can you complete telehealth integration?
Since integration significantly redefines patient relationships, practices are recommended to consider how they structure their virtual care. These practical steps offer a framework for optimal telehealth integration.
Determine your scope of telehealth services
Figure out what services you want to deliver virtually and how to provide those services. Some specialties and situations will always require an in-office visit. A scheduling function enables providers to control patient self-scheduling. These limitations and other parameters can be shared with patients. You can manage your scope by reaching out to your patient base and constructing your schedule accordingly.
Decide what data goes into the EHR to prevent data overload. This is particularly important in chronic care management, where the frequency of remote monitoring data input to the EHR should be consciously decided, and not left up to the device.
Establish workflows to maximize virtual care efficiency
Map out current workflows for in-person visits and then overlay them in a virtual workflow. This involves how patients enter the system, how they are received, and how they interact with the provider. In regards to prescription refills, inform patients what types of medications and situations warrant a virtual visit.
Turn phone calls into virtual visits
Transition a routine call with a patient to a virtual visit without interruption. This is particularly helpful for providers who need to visually interact with patients in critical situations. A seamless transition from telephone-only to video without disconnecting supports care quality, especially for behavioral health continuity. These encounters then become reimbursable (during non-pandemic emergency rules and depending on your specific payers).
Benefit from patient experience platform integration
Eliminate technology barriers by not requiring patients to download an app or log into a portal for virtual access. Telehealth integration with patient experience platforms improves practice efficiency and allows patients to easily schedule online appointments, access educational materials and diagnostic test results from their portal.
Telehealth integration drives care quality for patients and eases care management for the healthcare team.
You can continue to learn more about telehealth with this telehealth marketing toolkit. Get yours today.
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