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.
When introduced to a new, easy way of doing business, it’s human nature to want to jump at it right away. The tough reality, though, is that rushing in without a clear plan in place could negatively impact what you are hoping to eventually achieve.
In the medical community, this, too, can happen to clinics who learn about the many pluses of telemedicine, and want to push it out to patients without proper preparations or considerations.
We know that having video calls with patients through an easy and secure virtual medicine solution like Banty is very attractive. However, to ensure future success with it, take your time so that your clinic can:
Build Familiarity with the Online Medicine Solution
No matter how straightforward your telemedicine solution is, you will want to give members of the clinical team more than enough time to get familiar with it.
In some instances, your team will be able to try out the solution independently and gain an understanding for the many features they will be required to use. However, you may also need to create training sessions for the staff to see that everyone is ready to go once the time comes to begin booking online doctor’s appointments.
By giving your staff a head start with the solution, they will have a high comfort level with it and not feel intimidated about using it on a day-to-day basis.
Minimize the Chance of a Bad Rap
If your clinic jumps the gun without properly preparing staff, then there will undoubtedly be hiccups. While internally that may not feel like the worst thing in the world, the risk you run is displeasing a large sum of patients.
When a patient signs up for an online doctor visit, they want the process to be as seamless – if not more seamless – than the in-person experience. As such, if the clinical team has trouble getting this patient to their virtual visit, or can’t help them if any difficulties occur, this could lead to a bad rap for the practice.
To be successful at offering telemedicine services, your practice has to always offer them in an easy, professional manner.
Test Drive with Patients
One way to avoid the bad rap but also see that your clinic is handling patient video calls effectively, is by test driving the services.
To accomplish this, you should seek out a select group of patients who have a longstanding, positive relationship with the clinic. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to ask patients who are known to be tech savvy to join in on a pilot project. (These patients should be made aware that they are helping you test out certain services.)
Having such test drives at the outset offers the clinical team a chance to use the technology in real-time, with real patients. Meanwhile, the clinic can also receive valuable feedback (both positive and negative) about how their virtual medicine experience went.
Such a project would provide valuable insight to your clinic on how it should/could best proceed in a telehealth environment.
Develop Processes and Strategies
Once staff education and patient feedback has occurred, your clinic should review how everything went, then devise a series of processes and strategies.
These processes and strategies could be anything from when patient-doctor video conferences can be held throughout the week, as well as who will provide guidance to patients who have trouble joining a live video chat online with their doctor.
As for strategies, one of the most major ones is how the practice will go about promoting telemedicine services to patients, and explaining to them the perks associated with an online doctor visit. If you want lots of patients switching over to virtual visits, a great marketing strategy is a must.
Tap here to learn more about how Banty can help your foray into virtual medicine!
