If practices take care of their patient’s needs and answer their questions via video conferencing, it is an opportunity to build patient loyalty to the practice.
And like a restaurant, telemedicine is a great way for practices to extend the value of their care and provide additional sources of income. That restaurant has found a way to extend their food service, bring in additional revenue and keep their hungry customers continually coming back-whether in-person or not. Now with the popularity of restaurant delivery services, you don’t have to get dressed, drive to the restaurant, be seated, get served and wait to pay the bill – all to eat your favorite pasta. To be able to communicate telemedicine’s benefits to your clients, it’s important to first acknowledge which cases (i.e., patient symptoms) are the best fit for a telemedicine appointment.įor example, let’s say you have a craving for your favorite pasta from a popular restaurant in your town, but you are currently in your pajamas after a hard day at work. Questions about how it works, how consumers pay for it and how practices can be reimbursed, often makes telemedicine seem ambiguous.
However, telemedicine can provide your billing clients with a convenient and accessible way for their patients to access care as well as help providers capture time spent on follow-up calls that have normally gone unreimbursed. It’s a common misconception that delivering patient care over the “internet” is daunting, not secure and doesn’t provide the same level of care as one-on-one “concierge” style office visits, which include physical touch. Telemedicine – the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients - is not yet ubiquitous and the reasons for this vary greatly, both within practices and directly with consumers (patients).