A telehealth system is one of the best ways to connect with patients from a distance. If you’re considering setting up a telehealth system, here are four questions to ask when first establishing it. These inquiries help dig deep into why you want and should probably have a virtual health program.
What Should a Telehealth System Have?
You can have anything you’d like in other parts of your medical center, but things are a little different when going digital. The first thing to ask is what you should have in a telehealth system. The options can vary from facility to facility, but what matters most is what you need.
Your program should heavily involve different work bodies, including primary care and specialty doctors, administration, and nurses. If your nurses aren’t administering any communication with patients in the channel, don’t involve them.
You should meet with involved parties to determine what the program needs. For example, a therapist could use the telehealth service to administer therapy sessions with those needing mental health services. Ensure you conduct a list of highest to lowest priority needs to decide the essential features.
Do You Have Someone To Help With Implementation?
You might’ve heard you need a champion to help implement the stages of your telehealth portal. A champion is another way of saying a team of specialists, or one individual, who assist with building the platform. They run tests, create the messaging system, and ensure that when patients use the server for the first time, they know who to contact.
Should You Make Goals When Creating a Telehealth Program?
In any segment of the medical department, you should have goals set up across the board. One goal to strive for is implementing good medical documentation practices, such as enhancing how patients receive their documents.
While the clinic’s main goal is to administer the best healthcare possible, the patient portal should reflect that. Focus on how the patient wants to receive their medical documents. The best tip for medical documentation improvement is to consider patients’ needs, such as granting them access to their medical documents.
Do You Have the Right Resources?
A portal only works with a strong internet connection, followed by software to run the program and hardware to protect vulnerable information. Ensure you have the right resources to start a telehealth program, like quality software and hardware, as both keep everything working, organized, and safe to use.
Looking over these questions to ask when setting up a telehealth system will help guide you to your goals. Dive deep with your team to create a virtual patient portal that’s easy to navigate for both patients and doctors.
