Telemedicine has become vital for expanding access, improving patient outcomes, and reducing operational costs in healthcare facilities worldwide.
Currently valued at over $130.5 billion, it’s used across various healthcare sectors, from primary care and chronic disease management to mental health, specialty consultations, rehabilitation, and pediatric and geriatric care. Its versatile applications allow providers to offer quality care remotely while enhancing collaboration among multidisciplinary teams.
In this article, we’ll outline 10 best practices for implementing telemedicine in your facility to assist you in delivering high-quality, secure, and patient-centered virtual care.
1. Assess your infrastructure
The first step in implementing telemedicine in your healthcare facility is determining whether your facility is prepared for its integration.
Technology is an essential area to focus on when assessing your facility’s infrastructure. When adopting telemedicine, your facility’s tech systems must be secure and reliable. Analyze your IT systems and infrastructure to ensure they support smooth, lag-free video and phone consultations. Your connection should also allow your staff to receive, store, and share encrypted medical information easily.
If your infrastructure requires an upgrade, find an IT expert who can assist you with updating your systems and integrating your selected telemedicine technologies.
2. Identify patient needs and service areas
The ultimate purpose of telemedicine integration is to meet patients’ needs in an accessible, convenient way. Begin this process by evaluating and distinguishing your telemedicine target audience. From there, you can assess which groups of patients will benefit most from telemedical care, and you have the ability to personalize your program to address their particular needs.
It’s important to choose the services you offer according to your target audience’s needs and the purpose of your system. Your facility can also provide many different types of telemedicine services. These include:
- Video consultations: These live, real-time video calls allow remote patients to connect remotely with healthcare professionals.
- E-visits: When hosted via a secure online patient portal, these visits allow patients to report their symptoms or ask their healthcare providers questions. Providers can then respond digitally either in camera or via email.
- Store-and-forward services: As the name suggests, this type of service makes it easy for practitioners to review medical histories and results virtually before booking a consultation.
Remote monitoring Telemedicine is another key service to consider integrating into your practice. It lets patients correspond with their care providers in real time, allowing doctors and care teams to provide ongoing care for patients with chronic or complex health conditions.
3. Select a solution aligning with your clinical requirements
Selecting the right telemedicine platform for your clinical requirements will support your program and ensure the needs of your practice and your practitioners are met.
If your practice offers general services, consider integrating platforms with simple appointment scheduling modules and video consultation functionality. These facilities and other specialist practices may benefit from real-time patient monitoring tools and provide secure patient portals for storing sensitive medical data concurrently.
4. Ensure legal and regulatory compliance
Technological healthcare systems must maintain a high degree of data security and privacy at all times to comply with HIPAA regulations.
Telemedicine service developers and providers alike should ensure their software complies with all HIPAA specifications to protect the privacy of patient information. This compliance safeguards your practice against costly penalties and litigation and assures patients that the software they use for virtual consultations is secure and trustworthy.
5. Provide training for clinicians and support staff
Once you have implemented telemedicine, you will need to provide training for your clinicians and support staff. This training should instruct your team on:
- How to make the best use of your telemedicine software
- How to hold effective and informative patient consultations
- How to securely transmit and store digital patient data
All clinicians and staff should feel confident in their understanding of your system before they begin to host online consultations.
6. Integrate telemedicine into existing workflows & current practices
Integrating telemedicine systems into your current workflows and systems promotes efficiency and considerably enhances the patient care process. Your system should be integrated with other healthcare technologies used at your practice. These include electronic medical record systems (EMR) and consultation booking platforms.
This integration enables healthcare professionals to rapidly access individual patient and population records while keeping them in a secure and centralized location.
7. Implement cybersecurity protocols
Many telemedicine platforms and providers face ongoing cyber attacks, financial fraud, identity theft, and ransomware threats. Integrating cybersecurity protocols into your telemedicine systems mitigates these risks and protects your practice and your patients.
Start by ensuring that your telemedicine system transmits and stores patient data securely and that you always use an encrypted internet connection. Your practitioners should only use secure devices for telehealth consults. Their devices should be encrypted, password protected, and fitted with updated security software. They should also use secure communications, like encrypted messages and emails, after each consultation to protect patients’ privacy.
It’s essential to confirm each patient’s identity ahead of virtual consultations. Request a copy of their government-issued ID to minimize fraudulent activity. To reduce the risk of identity fraud and breaches, prior to an appointment, you should confirm every patient’s:
- Full name
- Physical address
- Location of the device they’re using
8. Develop strategies to educate patients
Educating patients about the usage and benefits of telemedicine underlines effective implementation. Use platforms like email and social media to notify them of your new virtual services and highlight their benefits. These advantages include:
- Convenience
- Easy accessibility
- Minimized travel times
- Stringent security
- Responsive, individualized healthcare
Be sure to provide concise, step-by-step instructions on how patients can access and use your telehealth services. Providing these details will help you engage new and existing patients and promote increased adoption of your telemedicine services.
9. Measure service outcomes
Consistently monitor the efficiency and efficacy of your telemedicine services to gauge patients’ responses and ensure their needs are being met. Seek input from your practitioners, staff and patients and use this data to determine which areas of your services can be optimized.
Usage data and trends can also guide decisions about improving healthcare service provision. This information highlights where to enhance future services and what telehealth investments would align with your audience’s preferences.
10. Create a long-term strategy
Creating a long-term expansion and improvement strategy will equip your practice with the tools to continue providing patients with exceptional care and support.
Your strategy should include tools that aid in financial impact recovery and patient stratification.
Financial impact recovery tools allow you to assess your telemedicine system's impacts, reach, volumes, and returns on investment. They also use this data to recommend strategic adjustments for maximizing ROI.
Patient stratification tools enable providers to stratify and classify telehealth patient groups based on health risks, age, socio-economic considerations, and specific healthcare needs. This allows your practice to analyze and meet patient needs at scale, while automatically prioritizing the most urgent consultations to keep all patients in good health and eager to book their next consultation.
Telemedicine for Practice-Wide Success
"Telemedicine isn't just a shiny new frontier for healthcare; it's a return to its most essential service: accessibility." — Dr Sven Jungmann
Implementing telemedicine into your healthcare facility’s operations can increase patient satisfaction and engagement, enhance the quality of care your practice provides, and significantly reduce your costs in the long term.
Contact our team of experts to learn more about how our innovative IT solutions can support your telemedicine system integration.
