Deploying Telediagnostics in Your Practice: A Step-by-Step Guide
We’ve seen the benefits of telehealth services clearly over the past several years, so much so that telehealth has been solidified as a standard care option for most practices. But there is a limit to what can be done via telehealth, and that is where telediagnostics take over. Read on to learn more.
What are telediagnostics?
Telediagnostics is a modern healthcare practice that means “remote diagnostics,” and involves performing the tasks required to make a diagnosis from a distance. Essentially, a health care professional will remotely examine a patient in much the same manner they would during a face-to-face encounter, using technology to do so.
What are the benefits of telediagnostics?
Telediagnostics share many of the same benefits as traditional telehealth technology while taking remote care to the next level. With telediagnostics, care can be expanded to reach patients with mobility limitations or those located in underserved areas that are too far to travel to the office. While those patients can also be reached with traditional telehealth, there are limitations as to what can be accomplished in a regular remote visit. With telediagnostics, many of those barriers are removed and the level of care is on-par with in-person visits.
Care costs can also be reduced using telediagnostics, as unnecessary hospitalizations can be avoided by addressing concerns before they require admission. Many patients, especially those with mobility limitations such as the elderly, will delay getting to the doctor because of the difficulties involved. With telediagnostics, those concerns are eliminated, allowing for patients to be seen sooner and early interventions to be implemented.
Finally, practices can experience an increase in reimbursement by using telediagnostics, as they are able to bill for the highest level of telehealth. This translates to an impressive return on investment for a telediagnostics program, making it worthwhile for many practices.
4 Steps to Deploy Telediagnostics in Your Practice
As with any new program, the best way to deploy telediagnostics is to go step by step.
- The first step in deploying telediagnostics in your practice is to establish a plan for how you want to use this technology, who you want to reach, and what you want to achieve. Creating goals and benchmarks will be helpful later on after implementation as you seek to measure success.
- Next, you will need to choose your technology. Traditional telehealth platforms stop short of telediagnostics capability. In order to reach this new level, you’ll need to select a telediagnostics-capable hardware that will allow you to perform a thorough exam remotely, such as medpod’s MobileDoc.
- Determining your staffing needs for this initiative is the next step toward success. Many organizations find it’s best to deploy telediagnostics hardware with the help of a qualified presenter, rather than sending the provider out with the equipment themselves. The presenter will travel with the equipment to the patient’s location and facilitate the remote encounter with the provider. It’s important to decide if a current staff member can fulfill the presenter role, or if you’ll need to hire or contract someone for this task.
- Finally, begin to implement your telediagnostics program by running an awareness campaign, advertising its availability to your target demographic, and begin to see patients in this capacity, slowly scaling the program as you become more comfortable.
While it can feel intimidating to implement a new program like telediagnostics, it’s a fantastic way to connect with your patients, particularly the most vulnerable, in a new and exciting way. By choosing the right technology partner, you can smoothly deploy this program and begin to see success in short order. This is why at Henry Schein SolutionsHub we’re so proud to offer medpod’s MobileDoc. This unassuming looking case, the size of a carry-on bag, contains the power of a clinical practice, allowing providers to capture a wide range of patient data from a distance and make detailed diagnoses as they would in-person. For more information or to get started with medpod’s MobileDoc, talk to one of our Solutions Consultants today.
