How Telemedicine Improves Patient Retention?
Today people are looking for smart ways to access healthcare online. They like to have a quick doctor’s appointment when their schedule is too busy to leave the office. So, in today’s tech world, if you wish to build your practice you need to take care of your patients.
While some patients still prefer to go with the in-person visits, many prefer to go with the online healthcare telemedicine visits – which is more comfortable and safe too. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of telemedicine continues to expand day by day.
So how you will improve your patient retention with the adoption of telemedicine? Here are the top benefits of how telemedicine help in your patient retention.
Telemedicine fills the care gaps at your practice
When patients are busy and unable to get an appointment with your practice, what happens? Do patients simply “tough out” their illness, miss taking crucial medicines, or move to another provider with more open availability? None of these activities are good for your bottom line and are places where telemedicine may be able to fill the gaps and lead to improved retention and revenue.
Potential patients are likely to be busy and impatient, and not want to wait to make an appointment, or meekly spend time in a waiting room. Instead, you may find poor online reviews, patients who quietly disappear from your roster or a slowing trickle of new patients should others become frustrated with what could be considered gaps in care.
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Telemedicine improves your patient experience
Telemedicine offers a variety of benefits for your patients: the ability to set a very short window of time for their appointment, no need to leave their home or office location to be seen by a doctor, and the ability to stay away from a hospital or clinic setting where it’s the likelihood of contagion due to exposure to others is enhanced.
As long as the technology is working appropriately, the experience may also be better for the health care provider. While you don’t have direct access to an individual’s vital signs, you are still able to hear and see your patient.
Increasingly, traditional small practices are competing against urgent care clinics which are cropping up everywhere. Providing a telemedicine service allows you to maintain more standardized office hours while still providing the flexibility for patients to receive care when needed.
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Telemedicine helps in improving practice efficiency
Revenue is positively affected by telemedicine due to the ability to see more patients in a shorter period. There is also the possibility of having a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant identified as the primary telemedicine provider, which can free up the remainder of the team to spend time with more complex patient situations.
Having a familiar face available on the other end of a video call allows you to maintain a great doctor-patient relationship, while still driving efficiency throughout your practice. This is especially important for individuals who utilize a mixture of telemedicine and traditional in-person visits.
Many practices receive a variety of phone calls that pull time away from treating paying patients, which can add up to a great deal of non-billable time. With telemedicine, you have the opportunity to turn these requests into revenue — without a drastic change to the level of care provided or inconvenience to office staff.
Telemedicine helps support your overall practice revenue in a variety of ways — patient satisfaction, office efficiency, and the ability to turn non-billable calls into a revenue-generating activity.
Let Vozo helps your practice by providing the best telemedicine solutions to improve your operational efficiency while continuing to provide the highest level of care possible to your patients.
About the author
With more than 4 years of experience in the dynamic healthcare technology landscape, Sid specializes in crafting compelling content on topics including EHR/EMR, patient portals, healthcare automation, remote patient monitoring, and health information exchange.
His expertise lies in translating cutting-edge innovations and intricate topics into engaging narratives that resonate with diverse audiences.
