How has healthcare changed for you over the past several years? If you’re like many medical professionals, you’ve likely seen an increased demand for remote healthcare services.
The need for telehealth services highlighted solutions that allow for “low touch” or remote patient care. These virtual tools keep healthy people out of hospitals and doctors’ offices and enable all kinds of remote services.
How ready are you for this new normal? Have you thought of ways to promote better virtual customer service or found a reliable communication and appointment scheduling platform? If not, you may not be as ready as you need to be.
Ready to learn more? This article takes a deep dive into creating effective digital strategies in healthcare.
The role of digital technology in healthcare
Did you know the digital health market is expected to be worth $549.7 billion by 2028? Yes—something that was practically non-existent a few decades ago is in the billions range and will continue growing as more clinicians adopt technology in healthcare.
Digital technology bridges the gap between medical professionals and patients, facilitating broader access to healthcare services. You could be thousands of miles away from your patients and still provide the high-quality care you’d give in person.
Further, digital technology in healthcare provides better access to information regarding disease prevention, wellness management, and more. For example, with QR Codes for healthcare, you can direct your patients to healthcare journals, reliable medical sites, and even support forums via URL.
Providing easy access to information empowers individuals to take control of their lives and make well-informed decisions about their health.
The best strategies to enhance remote healthcare
There’s no question about the value of telehealth services for both patients and clinicians. In fact, 59.6% of physicians surveyed reported that telemedicine increased their job effectiveness and performance.
Does this mean you should invest in every type of telehealth technology? Depending on your patient demographic and goals for telehealth, you may want to start by introducing just one technology. Consider the strategies below to see what’s worth the investment.
Online appointment scheduling
If you enable patients to make and reschedule appointments independently, you can give your personnel more time to focus on the work that technology can’t do. This can result in greater productivity and boost motivation in your practice.
Further, online appointment scheduling enables your patients to schedule and modify appointments 24 hours a day—not just during working hours. Self-scheduling can lower your no-show rate by allowing people to choose times that work best for them. No-show rates drop even further with automated appointment reminder notifications.
If your private practice is struggling with appointment management efficiency or you can’t seem to lower your no-show rates, this is a great solution. Just ensure your patients understand how to use it for seamless scheduling.
Online broadcasts and reminders
The actual appointment is only a part of what patients today consider when evaluating their healthcare providers. The entire experience should be positive, from beginning to end. This means you should think about the patient experience not as single touchpoints, but as a full journey.
You can accomplish this by communicating with patients between their visits via email or text. Some popular notices include reminders about flu shots, preventive care, office closures, new services, and requests for online reviews.
For communications to be most effective, consider how they complement the patient experience. For example, you might ask patients to rank their satisfaction with their recent appointment. Then, follow up with those who gave high ratings to ask for an online review.
Remote consultations and appointments
Many patients today are shifting away from in-person visits and embracing telehealth. In fact, 80% of physicians now offer some type of telehealth services, and the majority plan to expand their remote healthcare offerings.
Why are clinicians and patients quick to adopt telehealth?
- Convenience: It eliminates trips to the doctor’s office and allows you to see your doctor from any location.
- Versatility: You can use telemedicine for a variety of health conditions.
- Safety: You avoid exposure to viruses, bacteria, and other sick patients.
- Accessibility: You have access to physicians everywhere, not just those near you.
If you incorporate telehealth into your practice, be sure to provide resources to help patients join virtual appointments easily. Also, invest in reliable, secure, and compliant tools for seamless service delivery and to protect patient privacy.
Diagnostic telemedicine services
Diagnostic telemedicine is a valuable practice, as it increases accessibility to healthcare services. It involves leveraging technology to remotely assess a patient’s symptoms and medical history and make a diagnosis.
The process could involve anything from video conferencing tools to messaging applications, depending on a physician’s preference and the patient’s symptoms.
For example, texting or audio-only solutions may be effective for clinical social workers or mental health therapists dealing with behavioral health cases. However, video is necessary for assessing conditions that require visual evaluation, like skin rashes.
Offering this type of service can promote efficiency, reduce wait times, and improve healthcare accessibility among patients in remote areas.
If you adopt diagnostic telemedicine, assess the needs of your patients to determine the kind of solution to invest in. This is especially important when choosing between video conferencing tools and SMS or audio-only solutions. Also, educate your patients on how to use the tools for timely medical assessments.
Patient portals and mobile apps
Most healthcare providers have virtual patient portals and mobile apps to engage their patients, but roughly 45% of patients are unable to access them reliably.
How do you fix that? First, ensure your portal or app has a user-friendly interface to promote intuitive navigation. Then, guide your patients on how to use your platform.
You can create a support team to help with technical issues that may arise and collect regular feedback to understand and address patient concerns and issues. This customer service strategy can promote broader adoption and patient loyalty.
Two-way messaging
Two-way texting enables healthcare providers and patients to engage with each other in a way that’s flexible and more discreet than a live call. In addition, it can reduce patient churn and improve or increase word-of-mouth referrals and online reviews.
Some practices include trackable, short mobile links to understand engagement with their patient communications. It’s also a seamless way to point patients to your mobile app or patient portal where they can schedule a visit or learn more about your services.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM)
Some medical professionals offer remote patient monitoring to enhance treatment efficiency and convenience for patients who need continuous care. The process involves using technology to remotely collect and assess patient data, such as vital signs.
This mode of treatment is especially valuable for patients with chronic conditions, as it allows their clinicians to assess trends and adjust treatments based on a wider data set. In addition, patients don’t have to make constant trips to their doctors’ offices.
As with other technologies in healthcare, the key to optimizing RPM’s benefits is education. Ensure your patients and their support systems understand the benefits of RPM and know how to use your chosen system to save time.
AI and machine learning
AI and machine learning help clinicians run their facilities efficiently by assisting with diagnostics and patient interactions. They can help with image interpretation and symptom analyses, allowing you to provide quicker diagnoses.
AI chatbots and virtual assistants can also respond instantly to patient questions and help with appointment scheduling, allowing your practice to run like a well-oiled machine.
When leveraging these technologies, implement robust security measures to protect patient data. For example, you can utilize encryption protocols and access controls to limit who can access patient information and use your AI systems.
How to implement these strategies in your healthcare practice
Now that you understand common digital solution strategies, let’s look at how to implement them to promote efficiency and ensure optimal patient outcomes.
Assess your existing digital infrastructure
You don’t need a complete overhaul of your processes or systems when incorporating remote healthcare. Many practices simply build from existing technological resources since it’s cheaper and quicker.
Start by evaluating your resources and identifying areas for improvement to determine what to invest in to promote remote healthcare.
For example, suppose you plan to introduce diagnostic telemedicine in your private practice. You’ll need to assess your current IT infrastructure to ensure it’s secure enough, can integrate with your electronic health records (EHR) system, and can handle increased traffic.
Train staff on new tools
You can only fully leverage technology if your team is on board. Develop a plan for educating healthcare staff on new technologies and strategies. This includes everyone from registered nurses and medical assistants to your billing team and customer service representatives.
Offering training streamlines processes by eliminating the need to constantly ask questions or seek help. Getting your staff on board early can also provide additional insights that you may not have considered for implementing and improving the new systems.
Ensure data security and compliance
Ensure that all the platforms or technologies you plan to use are HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant. This will ensure the confidentiality of all patient information.
Failure to ensure HIPAA compliance could lead to a monetary fine of $137 to $68,928 per violation and reduce patient trust in your practice, ultimately affecting your bottom line and reputation.
You should also maintain strict security protocols for data transmission and storage by using data encryption and restricting who has access to your systems.
Educate the patients
Patient education can promote systems adoption, allowing you to fully leverage technology in your facility. Here are some strategies that can help encourage the use of digital tools among patients:
- Provide educational materials detailing the benefits of digital tools and their functionalities.
- Demonstrate ease of use through comprehensive video tutorials that take patients through each aspect of your new system.
- Regularly assess the system’s user-friendliness by collecting patient feedback.
- Maintain a tech support team to solve technical difficulties and answer patient questions.
Use Bitly for link management
You’ll likely need to send multiple links to patients when offering remote healthcare services. For example, you may need to send appointment scheduling links, direct URLs to your video conference, or links to educational health information.
If you do, link management tools like Bitly are valuable solutions because they allow you to shorten long links into more manageable URLs. This way, you can easily share them through SMS, social media, or whatever communication platform you prefer. With Bitly, you can also brand your links by adding a custom domain, boosting recognizability and trustworthiness.
Bitly also gives you access to link analytics, such as the number of clicks your URLs receive and the locations of your patients in real time. This will help you gauge your system’s performance and inform improvement strategies.
For example, say you find that few of your patients click on appointment scheduling links. You can offer surveys to identify why and incorporate patient feedback into your improvement strategy to boost adoption.
Take the next steps in digital healthcare innovation
Telehealth technologies are more than temporary solutions—they’re long-term investments. Services like remote consultations, two-way messaging, and online appointment scheduling are becoming ingrained in our healthcare system. By implementing them now, you can improve patient care and efficiency.
Bitly is the perfect partner for continuously improving digital solutions and promoting patient satisfaction. With Bitly’s link management feature, you get detailed insights into your links’ performance, highlighting problem areas to work on to boost patient adoption.
Sign up for Bitly today to optimize your remote patient experience and embrace the future of healthcare.