Offering remote consultations via telephone or videoconference can significantly reduce your operating costs when compared to the traditional healthcare delivery method.
Most telehealth platforms allow for self-onboarding and enable you to include additional features like appointment scheduling, an option to maintain patient notes, collect payments and a way to send patients follow up resources. And don’t worry telehealth solutions are easy to implement.
Here are a few ways teleconsultations help lower your costs and make a positive impact on your business.
Reduce front desk support
Considering the average salary of a medical receptionist is £21,342, one way to reduce overheads is to use their time wisely. How? By streamlining your workflows, improving communication and saving time admitting more patients. This allows your front desk staff to focus on other tasks than answering the phone to patients who want to book an appointment or pay for services.
With the help of a telehealth solution, patients can self-service book appointments and make payments, reducing the support required from your admin teams. By cutting out unnecessary administrative efforts, you allow your front desk staff to focus on other business operation tasks.
Reduce office space
As patients are becoming more aware of the convenience and benefits that telehealth offers, more consultations are completed remotely without the need for physical assessment.
This means it’s time to think about your physical facility. The need for an office space with fewer exam rooms will save you a pretty penny on expensive real estate. Downsizing might not be an option for every business but there are efficiencies to be drawn such as reduced energy bills, insurance and even the opportunity to sub-let unused space.
Increase remote staff
The staffing crisis has left primary and secondary healthcare at a ‘breaking point’. So offering remote work will support opportunities for ever-popular portfolio careers. Portfolio careers lead to greater retention and reduce burnout, while allowing clinicians to enjoy a greater depth of experience.
Historically greater indemnity fees precluded clinicians from undertaking remote work. Now that the majority of professional indemnity insurers include remote consulting, this obstacle has been largely removed. The same goes for the abundance for telehealth-specific clinician training options. As a result, you can utilise the best talent available beyond driving distance from your facility.
What’s more, 43% of workers believe that remote work would allow them to see more patients and boost efficiency, delivering time-efficient and lower-cost interventions.
Efficiencies
When compared to in-person primary care, teleconsultations have been found to offer certain time efficiencies, reducing the cost for patient care. Research shows that teleconsultations were shorter than in-person visits. On average, a teleconsultation took 10 minutes, compared to the in-person visit that usually last between 15 and 30 minutes.
Using a teleconsultation platform that supports patient notes results in more productive staff and longer time spent giving patients the care they need.
Increase your virtual footprint
The convenience and ease of appointment booking and cancellations with teleconsultation results in a reduction in DNA (Did Not Attend) appointments. Through remote consultations, you can also grow your footprint from one that is geographically constrained to one that is entirely virtual and is only limited by artificial regulatory barriers, such as federal borders. In a fiercely competitive private market, this capability can reap tremendous rewards for you and the clinicians working under you. With remote consultations you can grow your patient base by expanding your medical professionals’ reach.
You can now truly take advantage of the power of your digital marketing campaigns, no longer shackled by your physical location.
Eliminating the logistical issues, you can reach a broader group of patients by widening the access to your services using remote consultations. Remote consultations are great for reaching patients with anxiety or those living in rural areas.
Achieve your net zero targets
A topical advantage to offering telehealth for your patients is how you can now contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of your organisation. For example by 2040, the NHS intends to achieve net zero emissions from what they can control directly.
By offering your healthcare professionals remote work with flexible schedules, fewer personnel and patients will have to commute to your facilities, reducing transport associated emissions and the energy consumption in the building.
