By
Jyoti Tejpal
Best Healthcare systems for clinics, physician service, government offering configurable & interoperable enterprise telehealth platform & point-of-care modules
Individual health providers, clinics and hospitals, focused on Telemedicine, Chronic Care Management and Home Care providing comprehensive White Label platform
Cloud-based, easy to install Telemedicine/Remote Monitoring Patient Medical History, Patient-Physician Schedule Management, Messaging & Documents/Notifications
Telemedicine software is the technology that offers patients and doctors to have conversations and conduct clinical examination remotely. It can provide things like email, instant messaging, and phone calls, but the most efficient application is video conferencing.
Telemedicine is a type of telehealth software which deals specifically with providing doctor and patient virtual interactions. The Telemedicine technology can have software with secure login and data encryption, and hardware, like video cameras and microphones.
Improve patient satisfaction: Patients are more likely to select a medical provider who accesses telemedicine services over one who doesn’t. By providing telemedicine, practices can better serve patients by offering the benefits that matter to them, such as more convenient access to care and more affordable critical care and examinations.
See more patients: Because telemedicine appointments are useful as they are faster than in-person check-ups. Using this software helps providers to see even more patients, which helps in increasing revenue.
Decrease no shows and cancellations: Making appointments easier for patients to attend has the added benefit as it reduces no shows and appointment cancellations.
Medically-specific software: Telemedicine software should be unique for medical use, like diagnosis, treatment, and consultation, rather than general video conferencing software.
Remote treatment plans: Make online notes about patient appointments with short- or long-term care plans, follow-up appointment schedules, etc.
Appointment scheduling: Book appointments for patients and manage doctor’s calendar within the telemedicine platform.
Video conferencing: Utilizes audio/video tools to conduct secure and remote appointments with patients in real-time.
E-Prescribing: Connect with a pharmacy or dispensary to send electronic prescriptions remotely.
Virtual waiting room: Monitor patient wait times for incoming appointment requests that have not been routed and notify patients when their scheduled appointments are available.
Products available in the market are priced on a per-user, per month basis. Accessible electronic health records (EHR) providers have developed, co-ordinated and integrated telemedicine platforms that are not offered or priced out separately from their electronic records platforms.
Stand-alone software versus integrated video conferencing features: One major point to be considered is a tremendous impact on pricing and utility is the difference between independent telemedicine platforms and EHRs with built-in telehealth features. Stand-alone systems may provide integrations with existing medical software like EHR and billing, but they will have amounted separately. An excellent first step when researching telemedicine software is to check with the current EHR provider to see if they provide secure video conferencing or other telemedicine features.
HIPAA compliance: All medical software used by entities that adhere to HIPAA guidelines, all protected health information (PHI) shared via telemedicine software must be secured.
COVID-19 increased usage rates: In the early months of 2020, the coronavirus, or COVID-19, hit the world. Because the highly contagious and dangerous virus attack to immune-compromised patients, doctors and hospitals are looking to telemedicine to offer remote care and decrease the risk of spread. Remote and telehealth treatment have increased drastically. Over half of the patients are being treated remotely nowadays due to the Covid conditions.
Regulations and requirements around telemedicine increased accessibility during COVID-19 outbreak: To make telemedicine easier and accessible for patients, several significant changes were made with the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act and the CARES Act. These changes expanded Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine appointments and relaxed enforcement of HIPAA regulations, for the time being, has increased the number of providers and patients utilizing this software.
