How to Start a Telemedicine Business
Deliver caring and thorough telemedicine services for your patients. Considerations that show your telemedicine business is user-friendly, HIPAA-compliant, and virtually secure satisfy your patients’ needs and increase their trust.
Ready to serve? Or Ready to serve!
There has been both a rapid growth of health businesses and practitioners online and a rising demand and need for telemedicine services. While the rise in starting a Telemedicine business had been apparent before, the COVID-19 Pandemic certainly hastened its utilization. But how is the virtual practice gauged as good-to-go or still on-the-works? Current telemedicine practices provide evidence that the readiness of a virtual practice heavily relies on multiple facets. These include compliance with the laws, optimal use of technology, and optimizing page traffic.
Law abidance per state
State laws must be the first consideration in starting a telemedicine business. It encompasses practice requirements, limitations, or restrictions per state, financing provisions for clients, and practice reciprocity inter-state. This guide by eVisit is an excellent resource for learning about the applicable laws in your state!
Optimal use of technology
Many communication platforms have emerged that cater to telemedicine practices and aid their patient care needs. So, when choosing the best telemedicine platform, what elements should stand out to set one apart from the rest?
- • Seamless integration with your clients’ electronic health records
- • Compliance to HIPAA and medical board rules and regulations
- • Compliance to Data Protection measures
- • Customizable interface for the uniqueness of your practice
- • Availability of 24/7 tech support
Optimizing page traffic
Page traffic is an essential element in growing virtual practice. Subsequently, skillfully using social media and maintaining a unique website offers a great deal of help in increasing brand awareness for telemedicine. This reach enables practices to tap into a market of an even wider range of clients.
Barriers to telemedicine services uptake
Unfortunately, even after tedious preparation, challenges that inhibit patients from adapting to virtual consultations still persist. Due to this, the patient and client return is still a fraction of what it can be with the right adaptations.
The first barrier in starting a telemedicine business is telecommunication infrastructures. These technologies have the tendency to overwhelm patients and clients, which often results in losing patients due to the intricate details and steps of supposedly simple processes.
Another barrier can occasionally be patient privacy and confidentiality. With the telecommunication infrastructures, patients and clients want reassurance that these technologies will be able to keep any and all of their information safe.
The last barrier is the COVID-19 Pandemic. Because of the restrictions entailed by the Pandemic, conventional triage systems have been adjusted. However, listed below are some tips on overcoming these barriers for a better telemedicine service uptake!
Tips on Breaking Telemedicine Business Uptake Barriers
Make sure you have a user-friendly interface
The ideal interface is one that guides its users – physicians and patients- seamlessly through a transaction. The main goal is to increase patient-dependability on the interface. The ease of navigation should be experienced from appointment scheduling to bill payment process. Convenience and efficiency are key characteristics of good telemedicine virtual visits and consultations. And so, the interface should be able to cater to interactive appointment sessions at all times for first-time and follow-up visit booking, and visit rescheduling or cancellations. Increasing physician-dependability on the interface also eases access to electronic medical/health records (EMR/EHR). It is critical to have the patient’s medical records easily accessible to the physician to prevent delays on the following appointments and ensure seamless navigation through different patients since online meetings are strictly time-bound. Overall, an uninterrupted interface experience improves patient consultation turnaround time and ultimately enhances telemedicine practice.
Ensure complete coverage of patient privacy and confidentiality
Telemedicine practices highly rely on EMR/EHR systems that make it accountable for patient privacy and confidentiality. A good practice must be able to uphold patient integrity while also able to deliver quality services. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the US legislation covering laws to protect data privacy and security from medical information breaches. Click here to read in-depth on how to uphold HIPAA guidelines in telemedicine practices.
Enhance flexibility in your telemedicine practice
Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, specific telemedicine practices catered to niche clients specific to the medical specialties they offered. Due to this, these practices have existing tele-triage methods that work for them. However, as the Pandemic has shown us, being able to adapt is crucial. Such adaptations must be designed to meet the needs of services and tele-triage systems in both existing and new telemedicine practices.
Understaffing and lack of rooms or facilities in hospitals is evident worldwide. Moreover, due to the influx of patients each day, seeking medical help in physical establishments has been impossible and even threatening to people’s health. Fortunately, telemedicine has been deemed one of the safe and effective interventions available in the wake of the crippling healthcare crisis. And so, tailoring tele-triage methods to the current needs of the general public can help decrease the high volume of patient influx seeking care in physical facilities. Furthermore, it can reduce the likelihood of transmitting and acquiring COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, and ultimately secure the safety and health of our HCPs and critical care patients. Here is a guide for healthcare systems providing non-COVID-19 care to know when to care at home and refer to the hospital.
Guarantee quality at all costs
Doing everything virtually has a chance at causing providers to overlook the quality of care given to patients and clients. However, most patients using telemedicine expect an at par or better patient experience as opposed to face-to-face interactions. Therefore, virtual practices must deliver seamless HCP-patient interactions through technology and a user-friendly interface with minimal to no negative impact or delays. With that in mind, identifying an efficient workflow for virtual practice is a necessity. HCPs and staff must be trained in many areas. These areas include, but are not limited to, unified policies, standards, and protocols for the telemedicine practice, including visit scheduling, patient care documentation, billing, tele-triage, and the referral process. Moreover, it is important to enhance a performance-driven culture among the staff to gear them towards a unified goal that makes quality and ingenuity the practice’s brand.
Last but not least, a telemedicine practice should empower patients to participate in the maintenance and restoration of their health. We are more than delighted to assist you in starting up or optimizing your existing telemedicine practice. Consult with us today!
