Welcome to today’s Knowledge Knugget, as a part of “The Executive Innovation Show” podcast, we’re bringing you the hot topics, questions we receive each week, and game-changing ideas, best practices, and tips. During this week’s segment, Justin Knott, President of Intrepy Marketing answers the question – how to market your telemedicine solution.
So you’ve picked a telemedicine software, which almost every practice has at this point. If you haven’t, you need to get on that very quickly, so you can open your digital doors and start seeing patients again.
But now that you’ve picked it, how do you let patients know that you’re doing it? How do you make it as easy as possible, especially for the 50 and older crowd that you take care of? These are the top tips to follow to increase adoption rates and continue to see patients frequently on a daily basis.
As a healthcare marketing agency these tips have been really effective, helping practices adapt to the technology, increase patient retention, start seeing more patients, and scale their telemedicine visits.
Tip #1 – Place an Announcement on Your Website
It’s super easy, but surprisingly people are just still not doing it is you got to get the information up on your practice website. Easy enough again, get it up on your website. So once you’ve chosen a telemedicine provider, you want to make sure that you have COVID related information that you can deliver to your patients on your website.
What you should tell your patients?
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Tell them are we open?
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How are we keeping people safe?
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What is our plan?
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How are you rolling out telemedicine/telehealth?
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How to book an appointment?
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How they’re going to see you over telemedicine?
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What the whole process looks like and what to expect.
Make sure that patients can come to your website and see the message clearly and easily. Justin Knott suggests that a top announcement bar to make patients aware that we are seeing patients with telemedicine services. And when they go to that page, this is how our telemedicine process works.
Tip #2 – Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
Assume your patients know nothing. They don’t know that you’re open. They don’t know how to do telemedicine because oftentimes that is true. So leverage your social media platforms to put out a series of posts about how you’re handling COVID, the fact that you are offering telemedicine, and how they can book appointments.
Make sure to continue that rhythm for new patients that are finding you online and leverage your existing patient email list. Make sure you get out some communication and even mail a letter. If you have to try to hit all angles for all ages, depending on how people like to absorb information and try to hit on all of those avenues.
Tip # 3 – Online Appointment Booking
Some EMRs out there offer it and you can iFrame it on your website. There’s also a lot of HIPAA compliant online appointment booking, softwares that you can integrate. It’s just going to make things a whole lot easier when people get on your website to go ahead and book an appointment and receive the information about telemedicine and see you.
Tip #4 – Text Messaging to Reduce No Show Rates
Next up, Justin Knott recommends that you have text messaging capabilities for a couple of different reasons. And again, your EMR may provide it. If not, I would recommend finding a solution for it.
You’re going to be able to reduce no shows by sending reappointment reminders, say at three days before and one day before to make sure that you’re maximizing your time and not having a lot of no shows. It’s a great and easy way to get people up onto your telemedicine visit is just by texting them the link and they can go on there.
Tip #5 – Simplicity is Key!
When looking for a telemedicine provider, make sure you have one that limits the amount of steps required to get them on there. And the most important being downloading software like you have with video conferencing, the more apps or desktop downloads that especially a patient 50 or older has to do. The more likely it is for human error to be involved, which you really want to avoid. Otherwise you’re spending more time tech in troubleshooting than you are actually on the point of care for your patients, which is what this is all about.
Pro Tips
Justin recommends making sure that you have some type of backup telemedicine option and FaceTime or Skype for business. Something like that can be a really easy backup in the event of latency or downtime because telemedicine platforms are being stretched a little bit more than they ever have to say the least.
Also, don’t forget when you’re communicating, do not leave out your referring providers. Remember to communicate better with your referring providers and their physician liaisons.
That’s today’s healthcare Knowledge Knugget, part of The Executive Innovation Show. Feel free to submit questions or be featured on the Knowledge Knugget. Subscribe to our YouTube, Vimeo, and the podcast channels to get your Knowledge Knugget on Thursdays.
Watch the on demand webinar “Best Practices: Virtual Telehealth Patient Handoff Workflows” and listen to the healthcare podcasts where we talk about all the use cases for telehealth.