Reaching New Patients & Expanding Your Reach with Custom Telehealth Platform
Ever since humans started providing healthcare services, accessing healthcare services for patients has always been difficult. While some lacked awareness about such services, some lacked the necessary resources to access them.
This problem still continues to be a major hurdle in the entire healthcare industry. For instance, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in 2020 found that individuals in rural areas have to travel around 40.8 miles on average for their radiation treatment. For someone who is suffering from a chronic disease like cancer, in this case, has to struggle to access their basic care. To worsen the situation further, there are long waits before the patient can actually consult with their doctor.
However, as technological advancements are making their place prominent, the scenario is changing slowly. After COVID-19, many healthcare practices have recognized the potential of healthcare telehealth solutions, and they have even started telehealth services for patients.
Furthermore, as the healthcare industry continues to move in the direction of a completely digital landscape of healthcare delivery, virtual healthcare services will be a norm, and custom telemedicine platforms will be the go-to place for many patients seeking healthcare services.
Healthcare providers enabling telehealth services for patients have made a successful attempt to close the gaps between healthcare services for patients. However, expanding healthcare reach with telehealth is still a challenge for many providers using off-the-shelf telehealth software. That is the reason in search of the best telehealth solutions for clinics, healthcare providers are choosing a custom development approach.
In this blog, let’s discuss how a custom telemedicine platform can help healthcare providers in enhancing their virtual healthcare services while expanding healthcare reach with telehealth.
Breaking Down the Geographical Barriers
In a nutshell, telehealth is the use of telecommunication technologies to provide healthcare services virtually. The major benefit of using telehealth for medical practices is that by allowing patients and providers to connect virtually, it removes the geographical and other physical barriers that both parties face in accessing healthcare.
For instance, with a telehealth platform, a patient can virtually connect with their patient from any location and consult their concerns. Along with that, with remote patient monitoring devices, providers can also track their health vital in real-time. In this way, the telehealth platforms for doctors can bridge the accessibility gaps and remove the geographical barriers for patients in underserved and rural areas to access healthcare.
Apart from that, since technology has removed the geographical barriers, healthcare providers can now serve a larger patient populations from multiple states and even countries. However, abiding by their regulatory rules is necessary, and one should also consider the availability of the necessary technological infrastructure.
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Telehealth software helps healthcare providers overcome geographical barriers and make healthcare services accessible to everyone. Along with that, it also empowers your practice with data-backed practice, which ensures accuracy and efficiency in providing care services, which inspires better healthcare practices with improved patient outcomes.
This makes your practice result-oriented, which naturally attracts more patients in search of better healthcare services. In such cases, with a custom telemedicine platform, you can provide virtual healthcare services to your patients, giving them the convenience of receiving healthcare services without the need to visit the clinic physically.
However, it is easier said than done, as you need to target the right patient demographics and do extensive marketing of your virtual healthcare services. Having said that, remember that these are additional benefits since expanding healthcare reach with telehealth will depend solely on word of mouth and the results you deliver to your patients by improving their health.
Enhancing Patient Experience
Being a healthcare provider, you might be aware of and even have provided healthcare services virtually. However, virtual healthcare services are a fairly new concept for many patients around the globe. That is, to make virtual healthcare services a norm for your healthcare practice, enhancing the patient experience is extremely important.
To enhance your patient’s overall healthcare experience custom telemedicine platform becomes your ideal choice as you can add additional features like Patient Portal, where the patients can easily access their healthcare data with EHR integration.
Further improving the connectivity between patients and providers, the secure communication features might come in handy. With this, patients can easily connect with their providers over text or audio calls for minor inconveniences.
Despite all these features, the major feature that you must include in your healthcare telehealth solutions is appointment scheduling with calendar integration. This gives your patients more control over their health and also helps your practice streamline the entire appointments for both virtual and in-person visits.
Along with all these features, you should focus on making your custom telemedicine platform easy to use and user-friendly. It will not only make the software easy to understand, but the users can also easily navigate through the software efficiently, allowing them to explore all the necessary features and care services in one place.
Scaling Your Practice Efficiently
There are many benefits of starting your virtual healthcare services with telehealth for medical practices. However, nothing comes close to the potential of scalability that it adds to your practice. Typically in a traditional healthcare setting, scaling your practice would require you to have more space, utilities, resources, staff, and even providers.
On the contrary, with a custom telemedicine platform, scaling your practices becomes easier as most of the administrative tasks for which you need resources are automated. Along with that, you remove the need for physical space for consultation, as with healthcare telehealth solutions, your patients can easily connect with the providers to receive care.
So, with the best telehealth solutions for clinics in place, you equip your virtual healthcare services with remote patient monitoring, appointment scheduling, automated appointment reminders, and even EHR integration to access healthcare data. All these make it extremely easy for your healthcare practice to scale your services, offerings, and practice.
Data-Driven Decision Making
As mentioned earlier, with telehealth software, you can back up your care delivery process with data. By ingraining data-driven decision-making, you improve accuracy and efficiency in care delivery.
To help you understand this better, your custom telemedicine platform will collect all sorts of data that can be used to improve your administration, care delivery, and resource management. However, to rightly interpret the data, you need to imbibe the feature of data analytics, where the valuable insights from the collected data will be presented in graphical and tabular form, which makes it easier for you to understand.
Here, you can use this data to optimize your operations and identify potential growth opportunities to scale your practice and improve patient outcomes. In a nutshell, the custom telehealth software will help you make evidence-based decisions to scale your practice and improve your care delivery, creating a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Conclusion
Expanding healthcare reach with telehealth is something that every healthcare practice is looking forward to. Along with that, the higher patient satisfaction rate, growing popularity, and the rise in the adoption of technologies in healthcare practices are some of the factors that are contributing to making virtual healthcare services from a trend to the norm.
However, expanding healthcare reach with telehealth is easier said than done, and that is why developing a custom telehealth platform specific to your practice and clinical workflow is extremely important. So, what are you waiting for? Let us help you get started with your virtual healthcare services with a custom telemedicine platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
A custom telehealth platform is tailored to a specific healthcare provider’s needs, offering unique features and integrations. Unlike standard platforms with generic functionalities, custom solutions provide flexibility, control, and scalability. This allows for better alignment with the provider’s workflow, branding, and patient experience.
A custom telehealth platform allows you to overcome geographical barriers, offering virtual consultations to patients in remote areas. This expands your reach, improves accessibility to healthcare, and provides timely care to those who might otherwise lack access to essential medical services.
Key features for a custom telehealth platform include secure video conferencing, electronic health records integration, appointment scheduling, patient portals, e-prescribing, secure messaging, data analytics, compliance with healthcare regulations (HIPAA), scalability, and customization options to fit specific needs.
Challenges in implementing a telehealth platform include technical issues (poor connectivity, platform glitches), patient privacy concerns, regulatory hurdles, reimbursement complexities, and ensuring quality of care without physical examination. These can be addressed through robust technology, stringent security measures, clear policies, efficient billing systems, and standardized protocols for remote assessments.
Telehealth boosts patient satisfaction by offering convenience, accessibility, and reduced wait times. Patients appreciate avoiding travel and long office waits. This improved experience fosters stronger patient-provider relationships, leading to better engagement, adherence to treatment plans, and, ultimately, improved health outcomes. Regular check-ins and remote monitoring further enhance patient care and satisfaction.
Telehealth platforms must comply with HIPAA for patient data protection. Providers need licenses in states where patients reside. Platforms should ensure secure communication channels. Additionally, they must adhere to state-specific regulations regarding telehealth practice, compensation, and potential fraud and abuse concerns.
Integrating telehealth involves connecting your platform with existing EHR systems. This ensures seamless patient data transfer, allowing providers to access medical records during virtual consultations. Prioritize compatibility with EHR standards, address data security, and train staff for smooth operation. Consider partnering with a telehealth platform provider for easier integration.
Implementing a custom telehealth solution involves costs for software development, hardware, network infrastructure, integration with existing systems, cybersecurity measures, staff training, and ongoing maintenance. The total cost varies based on the solution’s complexity and scale.