5 Things to Consider when Choosing a Telehealth Platform

Choosing a telehealth platform can seem like an easy decision. However, for specialty practices there are long-term applications to consider beyond simply looking at telemedicine as a temporary solution. We've outlined five important things to consider before choosing a telehealth platform.

While in-person patient visits will eventually resume, they may never return to the volume they were before the pandemic. Telehealth has become a trusted method of seeking treatment and a recent study has proven the efficacy of telehealth over in-person visits. 

5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Telehealth Platform

You may be surprised to learn the breadth of capabilities telehealth systems can offer your practice. For example, in behavioral health, substance abuse clinics can now oversee the administration of MAT therapy via a telehealth network. Before the pandemic only a handful of providers utilized this. This was due to the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008. The act allowed providers to write a prescription for controlled substances for treatment only if they had an in-person examination with the patient. As of March 16th, 2020 the DEA invoked the public health emergency exception to the law. Now substance abuse providers can reach more patients and prevent relapse.

For physical therapy practices, telehealth is demonstrating impressive growth. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced in April of 2020 that they would expand telehealth coverage to include physical and occupational therapists, as well as speech language pathologists. 

5 Considerations

1. Telehealth Opportunities: It's important to consider when care can and cannot, or should not, be delivered via telehealth. Specialist providers should seek guidance from state licensing boards as well as board certified groups. 

2. Collaborative Care: It's more important than ever to to incorporate a telehealth solution that has the ability to send and receive notes and even videos. This way physicians, social workers, therapists, etc. can work together to ensure the best outcome for the patient by working together. 

3. EHR Integration: Telemedicine software should provide a seamless experience between patients and providers. It's important to be able to easily schedule appointments and document care provided during the visit. Without this component you're opening the door to provider burnout as they have to switch between platforms entering and reviewing information instead of concentrating on patient care. 

4. Telehealth Medical Billing: There are many EHR platforms capable of providing or integrating with telehealth providers. However, the important question to ask your representative is how they handle the telehealth medical billing. The system should be able to automatically create claims when the visit begins. In addition to functionalities like denial management and batch rebilling.

    

5. Flexibility: No practice is an identical clone of another and your telehealth software shouldn't be a cookie cutter solution for a complex medical practice. If your telehealth software doesn't offer some degree of customization for your unique needs, it's time to move on and consider another option. 

Start Here: InSync Healthcare Solutions

A sixth consideration is that the telehealth vendor should have a complete system comprised of electronic health records, medical billing, scheduling, and telehealth capabilities. The InSync EHR is fully integrated as well as being cloud-based. This means if your practice has desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices the InSync EHR will not only be functional on these devices, it will scale proportionately to fit the available screen size.

Schedule a demo today and get a customized tour of the software to see how it can help your practice become more productive and efficient while providing the best patient care.