Essential Steps to Building a Profitable Telehealth Program

The following steps help build a profitable and measurable Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring programs for Clinicians. Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring programs can require intimidating tasks which involve creating a financial plan, selecting a technology partner, and building clinician and patient buy-in. Here at PK+, we we help Clinicians establish a Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring programs that can be readily implemented.  

 

The following six steps will help Clinical teams start their telehealth implementation journey.

 

 

Step 1: During the first step, it is important to define your goals and objectives for the telehealth program. Setting goals for your telehealth and remote patient monitoring such as clinical outcomes and quality, and financial and operational metrics. How your program will be deployed and supported, as well as how the success of your program will be measured by your choice of technology platform are all vital factors to take into consideration when integrating telehealth and remote patient monitoring. PK+ offers a range of digital applications that provide healthcare providers & their patients with advanced, convenient and secure access to telehealth services.

 

Step 2: This step requires to select a technology partner that fits your project goals. Important factors to take into consideration include technology that is easy to use, high security system, integration options, branding and marketing assistance, total cost of ownership, logistics management and clinical support. Clinicians can also ask questions related to cloud-based platform, mobile application availability, and whether the software is secure and HIPAA compliant. TCE Group can provide Clinicians with consulting and integrations services for their telehealth and remote patient monitoring program.

 

Step 3: Identify telehealth project leaders and build your telehealth team. The two important roles for the success of your program is by the ‘Telehealth Executive’ and ‘Telehealth Leader’. These executives and your telehealth partners will be responsible for developing methodology to your program’s vision and mission for patient care as determined in step 1. Important factors to take into consideration during this step are recruiting hires who have supported in planning telehealth programs, and have interest in clinical operations and project development.

 

Step 4: It is important to assess financial objectives, rules regarding telehealth and remote patient monitoring in your designated area, and reimbursement. The best way to tackle this step is by breaking it down into two parts – a) Financial plans and b) rules & regulations, and reimbursement. For financial plans, ask yourself questions about how short and long-term financial goals will be measured related to your program, and how financial success will be measured? Financial models should go beyond reimbursement to include cost avoidance, and can possibly include operational improvements, and other non-reimbursement metrics.

 

Step 5: Establishing telehealth buy-in and educating your clinical team is the foundation for this particular step. It involves training and educating yourself and your clinical team to ensure the program’s success. This can be further broken down into a) pre-training demo of the software, b) clinical discussion with your team on workflow, patient ID, eligibility criteria and discharge criteria., c) ROI (return on investment) discussion of program and d) clinical training. PK+ offers video telehealth medicine, which is an e-virtual visit through MyVideoJoin. Other services available can be found in the following link.

 

Step 6: The final step is to determine patient populations and set clear enrollment and discharge criteria for patients. This step goes back to your objectives, and what population of patients you’re offering telehealth services to. This step emphasizes on the importance of establishing an enrollment criterion for patients, and creating a criterion for when a patient is to be discharged from the telehealth program.

 

You’re ready to launch your program!