Telemedicine
Telemedicine is the latest advancement in delivering the best in patient care. Using our telemedicine providers, medical professionals can securely and easily provide virtual care without tying up office facilities.
What is Telemedicine
Amazing Charts has teamed up with two secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth companies to best serve the needs of your independent practice. We want to be sure your practice has the ability to easily and conveniently communicate with patients, while maintaining your high levels of care.
Here are just a few of the many benefits your private practice can achieve with our dynamic telehealth solutions:
- Remotely deliver in-home patient care
- Initiate secure text conversations to patients instantly and easily
- Conduct telehealth video visits with the click of a button
- Maintain logs of chats and videos for billing and audit records
- Help your practice survive and thrive
How Does Telemedicine Work in Healthcare?
Telemedicine is used in healthcare to help providers communicate with, evaluate, diagnose and treat patients without a physical in-office visit. Patients communicate by using technology with a secure internet connection.
Although telemedicine is not appropriate for emergency situations, there are many ways it can be blended into your practice routine to increase patient care and reduce office expenses. The most common types of telemedicine solutions are:
- Interactive Telemedicine: This is probably the most well-known type of telemedicine. Also known as virtual care, this uses telemedicine software to allow providers and patients to communicate in real time. This may be accomplished using video or audio capabilities to communicate directly with patients, but can also involve secure messaging or patient portals.
- Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM): Using connected devices, RPM is a form of telemedicine that allows providers to monitor, collect data and manage patients’ chronic care conditions such as diabetes, COPD or high blood pressure.
- Store and Forward: In keeping with interoperability requirements, these capabilities allow your practice to store and easily share your patients’ health information with other healthcare professionals or specialists.
What are the Benefits to Your Practice of Using Telemedicine Services?
The ability to offer telemedicine services to your patients can bring many benefits to your independent practice, including:
Increased Scheduling Flexibility
The use of telemedicine solutions can give your providers more flexibility to schedule patient visits. They can occur any time or anywhere providers have network access. By working with your providers, your practice may be able to offer extended or weekend hours without incurring additional overhead expenses.
Better Office Efficiencies
There is less time involved in scheduling visits, putting patients in rooms, and traveling from room to room. The provider simply stays in one location and uses the telemedicine software to perform administrative tasks while spending more time with patients.
Improved Patient Outcomes
The visits, remote monitoring, and data sharing abilities give providers a better opportunity to diagnose symptoms, create treatment plans, manage medications, and provide lifestyle coaching for better patient outcomes.
Decreased Patient No-Shows
Managing in-person medical appointments can be difficult for patients, too, especially those in chronic care. Many need to arrange transportation, take time off work, and find childcare to keep appointments. Eliminating those obstacles means more patients have the opportunity to be available for scheduled appointments.
Better Work-Life Balance for Providers
Because they have the ability to manage care without being tied to a specific location, providers gain better control over their personal scheduling and have more family time without office stress.
Increased Practice Revenue
Telemedicine helps to streamline office workflows for scheduling, holding appointments, charting visit information, and billing. Less administrative input is required and providers can be more efficient, enabling them to expand the patient base and see more patients in the course of a day.
For the best results in telemedicine, work with the trusted and experienced experts at Amazing Charts
Frequently Ask Questions For Telemedicine
A: Great advances have been made in brining telemedicine technology to the private practice environment. Depending on the specific application, most providers find that telemedicine is as easy to use as other applications they access in the online environment. Most providers, and patients with even a basic online familiarity, should be able to take advantage of the benefits of telemedicine.
As patients become more tech-savvy, they are expecting providers to become more digitally enabled as well. The increased use of telehealth solutions during the pandemic made even more patients comfortable with this technology. A building trend now is that some patients will even consider leaving a primary physician for one that offers telemedicine services.
Telemedicine is a tool to help your independent practice expand the ways in which it provides patient care. While the telemedicine technology in use today is safe, convenient, and cost-effective, it is only as good as your team’s dedication to using it properly and continuously.
While urgent and emergency conditions should be routed to appropriate resources, telemedicine is perfect for routine, chronic care and well-care services. In the case of a patient with diabetes, remote patient monitoring can be used in conjunction with virtual care visits to help the patient manage the condition. For a minor case, such as a cut, a quick video visit can help the provider determine what additional type of care may be needed. The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit can be conducted virtually for those patients with internet access and the ability to understand the questions and tasks. A robust patient management system can help educate and remind chronic care patients of steps they need to take to maintain their health.
Because of its effective use during the pandemic, more insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, are now covering telemedicine expenses for patients. Be sure to stay within stated guidelines, and adhere to coding requirements.
Practices must pay attention to their patient population to totally understand the options for implementing telemedicine. Some rural populations might not have easily accessible internet communications, there may be patients with visual and hearing challenges, those who speak English as a second language, and some patients might not be familiar with the technology.
That depends on the software provider. Look for experienced software providers that offer encrypted technology, and those that comply with HIPAA confidentiality requirements.
Questions you want to ask during the telemedicine solution search process include:
- Is a contract required? What are the terms and payment conditions?
- How is practice and patient information protected?
- What specific software and hardware is required?
- What implementation and customer service options are offered?
- What technical support services are offered?
- What will patients need to participate in telemedicine?
Why Choose Virtual Care Options from Amazing Charts?
Amazing Charts has chosen to work with two amazing telemedicine partners – DrFirst and Updox – that provide secure and HIPAA-compliant solutions. Click below to learn more, and see which solution is right for your private practice:
Increase accessibility and connect to your patients face-to-face, no matter where they are, with state-of-the-art HIPAA-compliant Updox Telehealth. With Updox, there are no apps or software to install, and it is accessible anywhere with internet connection. The Updox Telehealth offering includes Video Chat and Secure Text. Pricing is $50 per month with an annual term (more details on next page). Click here to learn more about using Updox Telehealth
DrFirst is a trusted vendor in the medication management, care collaboration and telehealth space. Your practice receives access to powerful tools for remotely communicating with patients.
Pricing is $25 per month per provider for full access and $5 per month per support staff user (more details on next page).
Click here to learn more about using DrFirst with your EHR.
In order to best serve the needs of your practice throughout the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, we’ve teamed up with two HIPAA-compliant and secure telemedicine providers. We want to be sure you’re able to continue treating patients while reducing the spread of COVID-19.
Here’s some of the capabilities of these telehealth solutions:
- Remotely deliver in-home patient care
- Initiate secure text conversations to patients instantly and easily
- Initiate telehealth video visits with the click of a button
- Maintain logs of chats and videos for billing and audit
Learn more about our telemedicine partners, DrFirst and Updox, to see which solution is right for your practice.
DrFirst provides your practice with access to powerful tools for remotely communicating with your patients.
Pricing is $25 per month per provider for full access and $5 per month per support staff user (more details on next page).
Updox Telehealth is convenient and easy to use, and includes Video Chat and Two-way Secure Texting.
Pricing is $80 per month per provider (more details on next page).
