The COVID-19 pandemic drove rapid adoption of telehealth across health care. This benefited both providers and their patients, helping to ensure access to care, prescriptions and medical advice when in-person visits were not possible. This shift to virtual care also opened a “digital front door” for providers, allowing greater access to more patients.
While it helped many, the move to telehealth was not without challenge. New entry points and new ways of communicating with patients and delivering services led to concerns related to patient privacy, cybersecurity and increased technology support needs.
The recent Executive Order proposing to extend telehealth benefits permanently means that telehealth is likely here to stay. Health care providers have an exciting opportunity to capitalize on telehealth’s benefits for the long term. Mitigating challenges associated with telehealth to ensure efficient care delivery and satisfaction for both patients and clinicians is a vital step in making this happen.
Health IT departments have seen as much as a 700% increase in telehealth encounters in recent months – most of them concerning password resets and assistance setting up patient portals that often are the launch points for telehealth encounters.
As health systems prepare their health IT teams to support the long-term use of telehealth services, they should consider a partner that specializes in applications, technologies, and processes that consistently drive positive user experience for both patients and providers.
HCTec works with hospital systems across the country to support their patient facing technologies, from telehealth systems to patient portals. Our Managed Healthcare Services team can rapidly deploy as an extension of a hospital’s IT department, providing 24-hour clinician- and patient-facing support, securely delivered by a certified and highly skilled U.S.-based staff.
To learn more about how HCTec can support your telehealth deployment and increasing provider and patient demands, reach out to us today.
