When a medical clinic chooses to offer telemedicine services to patients, the desire to begin making them available to all patients as soon as possible is an understandable one. After all, with the future of patient care already here, why wait any longer?
While that is a fair question, thrusting telemedicine services upon patients and clinical staff alike can result in unnecessary speed bumps at the outset. For a smoother transition from strictly offering in-person appointments to making virtual ones available as well, it's prudent to begin slowly
Dr. Richard Tytus, Co-Founder and Medical Director of telemedicine solution Banty Inc., regularly offers online appointments. However, he believes if a clinic is just beginning to rollout such services, it's best to do this slowly because:
Building familiarity is important: Regardless of how easy a telemedicine solution is, those at the clinic need time to familiarize themselves with it. Doing so will allow everyone on the team to understand how to book appointments and help patients navigate their way through them. The goal should be that no matter who from the clinical team is at the office on a given day, the quality of online medical services will never waiver
Process and strategies need to be put in place: 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 video call with their doctor. As for strategies, a major one is how the practice will go about promoting telemedicine services to patients, and explaining to them the perks associated with an online doctor visit
Clinics should test drive telemedicine with select patients: To ensure that the clinical team is fully comfortable with telemedicine services being offered, see that they test them out. This can be done by encouraging patients who have a positive, long standing relationship with the clinic to test drive the services. They can help inform the staff of what's great, or what might need improvement. Either way, seeing telemedicine services through the lens of patients using it is a worthwhile endeavour
A poor first impression is tough to come back from: If the clinic rushes its telemedicine service offerings to patients and things go wrong, it will be challenging to win back their trust. As it is, not all patients are completely on board with virtual medicine appointments, so if these individuals have a bad experience right out of the gates, it may be hard to bring them back
"To make sure a clinic's telemedicine initiatives go well, it's important not to rush," adds Dr. Tytus. "See that everyone on the team is educated about how to administer the services and that patients always have a top-notch experience."
Thanks to The Andalusia Star-News for this coverage of Banty!
