Care providers must understand the financial impact of telemedicine investment. It is evident that telemedicine platforms benefit patients in innumerable ways from better access to care, reduced hospital readmissions, better health outcomes, improved convenience, and fewer days off from work, among many others.

Care providers need to devise the right strategies for those precious hours of telemedicine services to drive up the practice revenues. For healthcare providers that choose the right mix of strategy and intuitive technologies, there’s good news. Telemedicine services can boost revenue and have a positive impact on the bottom line—when done right!

1. Get Reimbursed for Telehealth Follow-ups
In today’s healthcare landscape, most of the telephone calls go uncompensated. These include calls on account of medication clarifications, urgent after-hours calls that take away a significant amount of the care provider’s time, yet goes unbilled. With a well-orchestrated telehealth platform in place, a majority of these calls can be channeled into remote visits, which would be billable. Providers can increase practice revenues through virtual care services, which may have otherwise gone uncompensated.

2. Grow your Practice
Telemedicine services help grow your practice in multiple ways. In the digital era, tech-savvy consumers, including patients, are looking for providers who offer telehealth services. For instance, 30% of patients are already using telemedicine services, and 64% of Americans have expressed interest in using telehealth services. When your practice offers telemedicine services, you will naturally attract this segment of consumers who prefer virtual visits.

Telehealth services also remove geographic barriers, travel requirements and parking expenses for patients—this helps you attract a broader segment of consumers. This is even more significant for specialty providers, allowing them to deliver care to an extended number of patients.

3. Retain your Existing Patients
Demand for telehealth services, especially in the wake of COVID 19, is at an all-time high and care providers who don’t offer virtual care run the risk of losing patients to those who deliver remote healthcare services. Research indicates that a whopping 1 in 5 patients would switch to care providers who offer telehealth services.

It is evident that there is a radical shift in consumers’ preference for convenient and connected care—and patients are even willing to switch providers to access telehealth platforms for care. If you have not already adopted a telemedicine platform, 2020 is undeniably the right time (with the prevailing global health crisis) to put a secure telemedicine software in place.

4. Enable Smart Scheduling to accommodate more Patients
A Merritt Hawkins survey indicates that an average wait time to visit a family physician ranges from 8 days in Minneapolis to a staggering 109 days in Boston. It is pretty evident why patients shift to alternative care providers like retail clinics and online-only providers. However, telehealth software bridges this gap by allowing providers to provide same-day appointments and leverage scheduling flexibility.

For instance, when there is an immediate appointment request, all you need to do is to reach out when a slot opens in the schedule. You can even provide after-hour appointments without any implications on office hours and staffing.

5. Reduce No-shows and Cancellations
Care provider’s time is undoubtedly of significant value and most important resource in any practice or hospital. With an average no-show rate of 27%, it’s no wonder that no-shows and cancellations have a tremendous impact on profitability and revenues of practices. While it is not possible to eliminate no-shows, telemedicine can reduce missed appointments by at least 50%. An MGMA Research and analysis report shows that 24% of missed appointments were due to work or transportation. These no-shows can be avoided with telehealth services.

6. Maximize Billable Time
Telemedicine platforms can bridge scheduling gaps and optimize billable time. This means fewer office staff and reduced touchpoints for patient scheduling. This allows for better Patient Experience (PX) and higher Patient Satisfaction Index (PSI)—while reducing manual and repetitive tasks.

7. Extend After Hours Visits
Since tele-visits provide an opportunity to offer healthcare services from anywhere, anytime, care providers are harnessing their capabilities to provide after-hours services to patients. Weight loss training, smoking cessation and other lifestyle-related services can be offered via telehealth platforms. A well-thought-out plan and a bit of creativity go a long way in accelerating the profit curve through telemedicine.

Final Words
As the healthcare continuum comes together to combat the global health crisis as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, telemedicine proves a significant weapon in connecting people, physicians and health systems.

SolvEdge understands its social responsibility as a trusted health technology company for 15+ years and has taken a special initiative to help care providers fight COVID-19—by providing free telemedicine services for the next few months.

SolvEdge’s patient engagement platform—RippleCARE is a proven and successful solution used by over 450 hospitals, 3500 physicians and over 3.4 M patients worldwide. Using RippleCARE, our clients have seen significant results including 23% reduced no-shows, 41% increased revenues, 23% improved patient satisfaction and much more.

This success formula is now available at an absolutely no cost, no contract and no commitment model for a limited time during the COVID-19 outbreak.

To avail our telemedicine platform to boost your practice revenues, reach out to us at
+1-(833) 33-Solve / business@solvedge.com

Give us a shout