Many Allied Health businesses offer Telehealth services as a contemporary approach to providing accessible healthcare services, in fact in Australia there are over 500,000 Medicare Telehealth services provided each year and that number is growing not only in Australia, but in New Zealand and globally.
As the global healthcare space changes with modern technology, and reacts to times of crisis ensuring your service is available to those who cannot reach you in person is critical to the growth and sustainability of your business.
That’s why we developed a built-in, completely free Telehealth solution for Gensolve. Easily set up a Telehealth appointment and email a private, automatically generated link to your customer that they can use to join you on a high quality call (if you both have good internet).
Here’s a quick video showing you how easy it to use:
In addition to setting up Gensolve Telehealth, here are some tips that will help you initiate your telehealth services or improve your existing program to manage increased demand.
1. Consider the range of services you can offer
Depending on the health service you provide, your access to resources and the nature of your treatment you may or may not be able to offer your full suite of services. It’s important to understand which treatments you can safely diagnose for your patients when they are to apply those recommendations without your professional assistance.
Take the time to consider not just your most common, but also your lesser attended conditions. Some ailments that typically don’t appear on your radar all that often may become more and more prominent as Telehealth services become a more reliable and in demand solution in times of emergency – remember, you could be one of a few clinics in your area providing telehealth services!
2. Train your staff on verbal communication
Most Allied Health services rely heavily on physical contact for communication during diagnoses and treatment and your customers will be used to taking direction not only from your words, but your action and physical queues. It is important to communicate clearly and confidently with your customers verbally when treating through Telehealth.
Role play some conversations with your staff and get used to describing treatments and also practice ways you might help your customers to describe their conditions and symptoms. It is critical the information you give and receive is detailed and specific enough for an accurate treatment.
3. Determine your session requirements
Beginning and using telehealth services can change your sessions in many ways, including the time they take, the technology required and the method of communication and resource management.
Test out a couple of sessions and get a feel for duration, they may be shorter or longer. Trial a conversation internally or contact your customers you have a great relationship with to gain that experience whilst you might still be learning or a little disjointed in your approach.
Ensuring you have the hardware to make the calls, video conference, live chat and upload documentation for your customers is key. Think about the service you will provide from start to finish and set up your technology beforehand so your Telehealth service is seamless from the beginning.
4. Ensure you have resources for your customer prepared
Moving to a telehealth approach means you may need more reading and imagery for your customers than you might typically provide. Video conferencing can be a great way to continue to physically show your customers movements and body language, however prerecording videos and informational PDF’s enables you to provide that information in bulk to as many customers as required.
Put some thought and time into creating some simple resources and educational materials for your customers before initiating your telehealth services, and you will save a lot of time and stress trying to create them ad-hoc when required.
5. Ensure your payments are secure
Don’t forget to think about the best way for you to invoice or transact with your customers. It is important you get paid for your service and time just the same way you would during a normal consultation so double check that you and your staff know how to take care of your payments.
Gensolve has integrated with two online billing platforms that can help you to transact with your customers safely, and remotely.
Here is some further information.
Also consider double checking your service and treatments follow the same rules under Medicare and Private Health claiming policies when providing them remotely.
6. Communicate with your customers
Finally let your customers know that you’re available for consultation remotely. Whether you’re a new or existing telehealth provider it is important to let your customers know or remind them they have the option to work with you without making physical contact.
We have a number of ways to reach out to your customers including:
And most recently we’ve added Mailchimp Integration for your convenience.
For further information on any of our recommendations or integrations, contact us.
