Virtual Care and Telehealth. If you’re someone who generally meets with your patients in person, chances are there may end up being a need to move them to virtual sessions. Offering telehealth services is something that will enable you to keep working with your clients without having to worry about disrupting their general care.
Here are three ways in which you can transition your medical clients to telehealth services.
1. NOTIFY YOUR CLIENTS
First and foremost, be sure that you take the time to notify all of your clients that you are making this kind of update. Many clients will view this kind of move rather positively, as recent studies have shown that approximately 70% of patients are comfortable speaking with their healthcare providers through methods as email, text message, or video conferencing. Some of the most common ways in which you can notify your clients that you will be transitioning to telehealth services include:
- Sending out a mass email to your clients
- Updating all appointment reminders and email confirmations.
- Sending text messages to your clients to remind them about their next session with you being via either phone or video chat.
- Updating your website to reflect the notification of the new changes.
2. CONSENT FORM
It’s also important to have your clients sign a telehealth consent form; however, this is typically dependent upon the state in which you currently practice in. On the other hand, states that don’t implement any form of strict regulations for nutritionists, dietitians, or other wellness professionals require clients to only provide their verbal consent in order to receive telehealth care. Regardless of the requirements, you will still want to at least consider asking your clients to fill out a telehealth consent form, as well as document in each session note that a verbal agreement was made by your client to conduct the session with you using telehealth.
3. WHICH SERVICES
You will also want to take the time to determine exactly what types of telehealth services your practice will offer. In the event that you will be making the transition rather quickly, then perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to consistently keep all of your appointment times and types.
- If you don’t typically offer virtual check-ins, you should decide whether or not you want to include something like this as part of your telehealth services.
- These services could include having to change your availability as well, meaning that you will need to communicate your new hours with your clients, as well as what the telehealth sessions themselves will look like.
- Even more importantly is the fact that you will need to decide whether or not you will want to take on any new clients during this time as well.
- Should you decide not to, it could be a good idea to create a waiting list in order to ensure that you’re able to properly obtain information from any and all potential new clients.
Virtual Care and Telehealth. Thank you for visiting Quick Claimers Medical Billing blog, an El Paso based company that provides credentialing, medical billing, medical coding, and practice consulting services. If you are looking to further discuss what services we can provide your practice, please contact us today for a consultation.