Telehealth allows healthcare providers to expand their services beyond the practice walls. The good news? The trend is growing. According to an American Medical Association (AMA) survey, 85% of physicians use telehealth to care for patients.  

This increase also raises questions. For providers, one concern is how to optimize telehealth workflows to reach more patients. To help you grow your virtual practice, this blog post will address this issue and many others, including: 

• Why you need a sustainable telehealth workflow.  
• What to consider before starting your telehealth services. 
• Four key strategies to advance telehealth workflows to expand patient reach and improve service quality. 

Let’s dive in. 

Importance of Sustainable Telehealth Workflows 

Before we launch into how to expand care reach through telehealth, providers need to understand what a telehealth workflow includes and why it must be sustainable.  

First, a virtual workflow often mimics an in-person visit, including: 

• Patient contact and scheduling 
• Consultation  
• Treatment  
• Documentation and follow-up 
• Billing 

Second, with these processes in mind, providers should evaluate how to make their workflow practical. Key factors to consider to make sure telehealth services are sustainable include: 

Understanding how telehealth fits into their daily work. This process will help providers include telehealth visits in their schedules. 

Educating patients about telehealth. This approach includes how to schedule a telehealth visit, where the visit happens, and how they can access technical support. 

Ensuring the practice’s online tools are accessible. All patients, especially those with special needs or who cannot speak English, should have access to a telehealth visit.  

Communicating with the medical staff. Ensure staff understand the reimbursement policies, procedures, and other documentation required for telehealth billing. Decide on “who will handle what” regarding the actual visit, such as who will explain the process to the patient.  

Providers may also have to determine if they need additional staff, such as a telehealth coordinator. Streamlining these measures ensures that providers and patients experience a seamless, effective interaction. 

Four Key Strategies to Advance Telehealth Workflows 

Below, we list four approaches to optimizing your telehealth workflow and several key implementation strategies to use before, during, and after the telehealth visit. 

1.Break Down Barriers 

One of the most significant benefits of telehealth is its ability to break down geographical barriers. For example, rural populations may require more medical attention but have more limited access to health care. In fact, more than 100 rural hospitals closed from 2013 through 2020.  

With optimized workflows, physicians can extend their services beyond brick-and-mortar locations to reach those who need them most. 

Key strategies: 

Make platforms user-friendly: Patients, especially older ones, want their telehealth visits to be as easy as possible. Making the process seamless reduces technical snags and encourages patients to use these services. Intuitive platforms accommodate this need.  

For example, the DrChrono Telehealth platform allows providers to schedule and conduct virtual visits directly from an electronic health record (EHR). Other features include: 

• Ability to create online appointments and send emails to patients without any additional software or complicated setups.  
• Patients can request a video visit, take it from their desktop, iPhone, or iPad, and sign consent forms in real-time. They can also receive a link to their virtual visit without any setup required.  
• Patients can schedule appointments online, pay for the visit, and conduct secure messaging if questions arise, all in one platform.  

Expand additional support: Offering support tools for those with special needs, such as physical limitations or visual or hearing impairments, can remove barriers during a telehealth visit. Here’s how: 

• Multilingual support can help engage a broader audience, ensuring language is not a barrier to accessing healthcare.  
• Telehealth tools that include real-time captioning can also increase accessibility.  
• Using printed information, graphics, audio recordings, or Braille can also aid those with vision or hearing impairments. 

2. Improve the Patient Experience and Win Trust 

A streamlined telehealth workflow improves the patient experience, increasing their chances of continuing to use services. An efficient system reduces wait times, ensures accurate information exchange, and increases satisfaction. 

Safety also matters. Patients want to know the virtual visit will not compromise their security or personal health information (PHI). Choosing a secure telehealth platform can win patient trust and continued loyalty. 

Key strategies: 

Choose wisely: Investigate telehealth vendors to see if their systems uphold strict safety policies. For example, DrChrono’s telehealth platform is both HIPAA-compliant and secure. Their Security Policy makes stringent efforts to ensure data security and fully comply with all HIPAA regulations.  

Automate routine tasks, but make it personal: Automation can handle scheduling, reminders, and follow-ups, freeing up providers and staff to focus on patient care. It can also add a personal touch that often gets lost in virtual settings. The DrChrono telehealth platform provides automated features, such as allowing providers to create custom email reminders to patients before scheduled appointments to reduce no-shows. 

It can also create reminder profiles to set up different emails or use pre-defined reminder profiles to ensure messages are as customized for patients as possible. Patients can then confirm via phone or email, which automatically updates their appointment in the EHR app or desktop. 

3. Make Telehealth Work for You 

An optimized workflow can mean the difference between total burnout and physician thriving. By reducing administrative burdens, providers can focus more on delivering care, improving job satisfaction, and reducing turnover. 

Key strategies: 

Integrating electronic health records (EHR): Seamlessly connecting telehealth platforms with EHR systems allows providers to have complete access to patient histories during virtual visits. For example, the telehealth platform Updox easily integrates with EHRs, so practices can schedule appointments, send reminders, and conduct virtual visits directly from their system. 

Keep up the support: Continuous training on telehealth tools and practices can give medical staff what they need to use technology effectively and confidently, according to the US Health and Human Services (HHS). Some training topics can include: 

• Learning the basics of telehealth technology and equipment, compliance and regulations, and reimbursement. 
• Understanding the unique elements of a patient’s identity. Cultural humility training helps combat misinformation surrounding underserved communities. 
• Digital communication training helps staff and providers interview and examine patients virtually. 

4. Go Beyond Telehealth 

Better telehealth workflows allow a wider range of services to be offered remotely. This can include chronic disease management, mental health services, and other consultations, all of which can be conducted efficiently with the right systems in place. 

Key strategies: 

Embrace innovative tech: Go beyond telehealth by including AI to assist in diagnostics and patient monitoring. With a rising senior population and an increasing number of chronic illnesses, more providers recognize the need to extend care outside their offices and use remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices.  

RPM devices encourage personalized care, patient agency, and a stronger provider-patient relationship, all while reducing costs.  

Make collaborative care easy: Encourage collaboration between different providers within the telehealth platform to offer comprehensive care so patients won’t have to travel. Make sure your system allows you to add participants to a call quickly, securely, and easily. 

Final Thoughts 

Enhancing telehealth workflows is not just about improving efficiency; it’s about making healthcare more accessible, equitable, and effective for everyone.  

By adopting the right strategies, telehealth providers can significantly expand their reach, providing high-quality care to more patients than ever before. And that’s the whole point, right?