Banty Co-Founder and Medical Director, Dr. Richard Tytus, provided the subject matter and direction for this article. The author would like to thank Adam Grant for his editorial assistance in writing the article. Dr. Richard Tytus takes responsibility for the content of the article.
What is very important to virtual medicine is having doctors and other healthcare professionals speak proudly about why such technology can have a positive impact on patient care and clinic management.
When a doctor is on the fence about whether or not they want to expand their practice to include online doctor’s appointments, having peers to lean on for advice is important. If you find yourself as one of those peers being asked for your impressions on telemedicine, you should speak openly and honestly about it.
More specifically, if you want to get fellow doctors interested in virtual medicine, here’s how to go about that:
Honestly Relay Your Experiences
If a fellow doctor has turned to you for guidance when deciding whether or not to offer their patients video call appointments, you should be 100% honest about your experiences. This means giving as to-the-point of an assessment as you can – good or bad.
Talk about what the experience was like seeking out a telemedicine solution that best catered to your clinic needs. From there, touch on what you consider to be an attractive price point; features you find handy; as well as how patients and clinical staff alike have adjusted to the technology.
Depending on how well this part of the conversation goes, your cohort may ask you for recommendations on which solution they should use for online doctor visits.
Introduce Banty Virtual Clinic
When recommending Banty Virtual Clinic to a healthcare professional peer of yours, you can be confident that you are pointing them in the right direction. At its core, Banty Virtual Clinic was constructed with a focus on ease-of-use and strong online security measures.
To start, doctors get to create a custom Banty address (i.e., Banty.com/MyClinic). This is the only link patients will ever need to use to have a video conference with their doctor. Meanwhile, each doctor can create a welcoming virtual waiting room that’ll help patients see they’ve arrived at the right location for their online doctor’s appointment.
In terms of security, Banty Virtual Clinic is HIPAA/PHIPA compliant for virtual medicine. What’s more, it uses end-to-end encryption to ensure all calls remain private and protected from unwanted third parties.
Meanwhile, the video call aspect of Banty Virtual Clinic is tremendously flexible. If a patient has a spotty Internet connection, the bitrate of your video feed can be adjusted through the click of a button. For really bad connections, calls can be converted into an audio-only format.
Explain the Benefits
While you may be trying to give a peer the full scope of your telehealth experiences, you should always accentuate the positives. Although perfection with anything is tough to achieve, if what you have experienced has been overwhelmingly positive, go into detail about why that is.
If welcoming a telemedicine solution into your practice has made the clinic more efficient and patients happier, then hammer home the examples. What’s more, if there are particular online medicine features that continue to make your work day easier than you could’ve ever imagined, offer those details.
By offering such positive initial insights, your fellow doctor will have a better idea as to what to look out for, as well as how to manage their expectations.
Point Out the Downsides of Not Offering Telemedicine
One last resort of convincing a cohort to embrace having live video chats online with patients is by theorizing to them what could happen if they don’t.
Mention that many patients now know how to see a doctor online and have the expectation that their physician should offer a virtual visit option. Patients want this option as it’ll save them time on the day of their appointment, as well as keep them out of crowded in-person waiting rooms.
If having a virtual appointment option is that important for a patient, they may eventually start shopping around for a different medical clinic that’ll offer them this type of care.
