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More than a video call: Actionable insights to help you successfully scale your company’s telehealth operations

More than a video call: Actionable insights to help you successfully scale your company’s telehealth operations
More than a video call: Actionable insights to help you successfully scale your company’s telehealth operations
More than a video call: Actionable insights to help you successfully scale your company’s telehealth operations

August 11, 2022

Introduction

This report provides actionable insights and strategies that are designed to help behavioural health and addiction organizations rethink their telehealth strategy. These recommendations will help prepare you, your organization, and providers as you look for new and better ways of delivering virtual care.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, behavioral health and addictions organizations were forced to rapidly adopt a slew of telehealth platforms and manual processes to continue caring for clients. In fact, it’s estimated that 60-90% of providers now offer some kind of online accessible healthcare service, with that number set to increase even more.1 With newfound healthcare accessibility, clients no longer have to take time off work or leave their homes and families for treatment. Clients now expect to receive superior treatment where and when it suits them.

Telehealth also enables organizations to acquire and retain clients, by offering virtual treatment that is not tied to a physical location. This enables organizations to keep clients in their circle of care even if the client goes home after treatment, by offering virtual aftercare programs and ongoing care. The rapid adoption of the point products mentioned– paired with manually processes– is having a real effect on organizations as they struggle to offer superior mental health treatment and keep up with client demand for telehealth. Ultimately, clients are looking for the same quality care that they receive in person, but in a more efficient and accessible way. The result of disconnected care? Inefficiency, disparate care and a negative patient experience.

To grow their virtual treatment programs beyond point products to deliver superior treatment to clients, behavioural health and addictions organizations need to redefine how they think about telehealth. This means reconfiguring their tech stack to include connected, seamless solutions for better care. 

More than a video call: Actionable insights to help you successfully scale your company’s telehealth operations

Redefining telehealth

Right now, providers use disconnected platforms or manual processes in an attempt to deliver comprehensive virtual treatment, which includes tasks that are not connected to a streamlined workflow or experience. For example, client admission is manual, and providers are stuck offering one type of virtual care through a video call. They capture patient data in one solution, and then waste time manually entering data into other systems. Clients often miss their appointments, and organizations continue to lose money and valuable time. This is not telehealth.

So, how do organizations get out of this rut and start to evolve thier telehealth operations? It starts by leveraging a telehealth platform that offers an intuitive patient experience, which can easily be configured according to the unique needs of your clients and teams. With configurable solutions, organizations can personalize client care and easily launch new treatment programs to ramp up client acquisition and capacity. Unlike Zoom, complete telehealth solutions help healthcare organizations unify their tasks in one workflow, maximizing staff efficiency from admission to aftercare. It is possible to deliver comprehensive treatment programs in a unified way that matches patient demand and expectations. In order to do so, behavioral healthcare and addictions organizations need to look beyond their point products to a unified, complete solution like OnCall Health, which enables providers to deliver comprehensive programs and the best client experiences.

As Shane Saltzman, CEO of Trafalgar Addictions Treatment Centers says, “video conferencing solutions only enable video interactions, and nothing else. Virtual outpatient programs require much more than a video appointment to succeed, to enable better outcomes for clients, and to help leaders build their telehealth operations.”

An evolved telehealth strategy

We know that delivering virtual treatment or mental health programs through disconnected systems is a strain on healthcare providers and clients. This is especially true as organizations care for 50 to 175 the number of clients they were prior to the pandemic. Now, healthcare leaders are looking to evolve their telehealth operations to help providers be more efficient, deliver the best patient experience, and expand their operations.

This next section walks you through each step of a comprehensive virtual treatment experience, comparing point products to an evolved experience managed with a OnCall’s end-to-end telehealth solution. We explain why a unified telehealth solution enables better care, and the actions healthcare leaders can take to ensure their platforms and technology are set up to deliver superior virtual treatment programs.

An evolved telehealth strategy

1. Booking & Admissions

Virtual treatment programs
powered by OnCall

Virtual treatment programs delivered through disconnected products

A digital-first experience for clients that integrates with existing systems.

A manual admissions process for clients and staff that is disconnected and inefficient.

  • Clients can request admission through your website’s branded booking page, and are matched with the right program or service.
  • Client data is immediately shared with OnCall and your other systems through OnCall’s API.
  • Clients have to call your organization for admission with no digital experience available.
  • Client information is collected over the phone or via unsecure email and is manually entered in your systems, creating inefficiency and errors.

Takeaways

It’s important for healthcare leaders to provide an accessible ‘digital front door’ and branded client portal to their virtual treatment programs, for clients to begin the admissions process and continue to enroll in virtual treatment programs. Organizations are more likely to see a decrease in client churn if clients are easily able to find and receive care.

Actions for healthcare leaders

1. Start by asking questions: “Does my organization have an accessible way for patients to book appointments online?” and “Is my digital booking page easy to navigate?”

2. See if your existing platforms offer a patient-facing digital experience.

3. Look for complete solutions that offer an intuitive digital admissions experience.

Actions for healthcare leaders

2. Program Onboarding

Virtual treatment programs
powered by OnCall

Virtual treatment programs delivered through disconnected products

Clients are prepared for programs with automated onboarding and technical support through your branded solution.

A lack of program onboarding and support makes care inefficient.

  • Automatically collect information like insurance, payment, and informed consent through your secure app.
  • Clients get access to web and mobile branded apps to view forms and upcoming appointments.
  • Device and internet testing is done during onboarding to troubleshoot any issues prior to appointments, with technical support available.
  • Client information, such as informed consent, is collected over the phone or through unsecure email.
  • Clients do not have access to apps to easily access important information like forms, homework, or appointment information.
  • Proactive onboarding and technical support isn’t available so troubleshooting takes place during an appointment.
2. Program Onboarding

Takeaways

Leveraging an end-to-end platform with automations is paramount, as it helps reduce operational redundancies and inefficiencies. This includes client onboarding and technical support to ensure clients are always prepared for their appointments.

Support at every step greatly reduces client no-shows, because clients are constantly engaged with personalized communications while receiving the support they need to complete their programs.

Actions for healthcare leaders

1. Start by asking questions: How much time are providers wasting troubleshooting their client’s technical issues, with no support available from their platform?

2. See if your existing platform offers technical onboarding and provider training, like best practices and “webside manner” recommendations.

3. Look for complete solutions with a dedicated customer success team that manages the onboarding process, including familiarizing staff with features and answering any technical questions prior to implementation.

Actions for healthcare leaders

3. Program Delivery

Virtual treatment programs
powered by OnCall

Virtual treatment programs delivered through disconnected products

Configure multiple end-to-end treatment programs and deliver them through your branded solution.

Virtual programs are administered through disconnected point products like Zoom.

  • Treatment programs are managed through a unified solution that can be configured with different rules for appointments, content, communications, and data.
  • Host different types of appointments, such as 1:1, group video, and instant messaging, and send automatic appointment reminders to reduce no-shows.
  • Automatically and securely share personalized content with clients through OnCall, like PHQ-9s, and assignments with rich media.
  • Program activities and tasks are not tied to a single workflow, and are completed manually or through different systems.
  • Providers and administrators manually send a Zoom link to clients to join appointments and no-shows are common because clients do not receive automatic reminders, costing the organization time and money.
  • Providers manually email content, like a Microsoft Word document or PDF to clients following an appointment.

Takeaways

End-to-end telehealth platforms offer more than video calls, with instant messaging features, group appointments, content sharing tools, and more. Delivering virtual treatment in a constructive and structured way–using tools and features to engage clients beyond a video call– means that providers can deliver personalized and comprehensive care. Ultimately, better care helps you build client confidence to increase retention rates and keep clients in your circle of care.

Actions for healthcare leaders

1. Start by asking questions: Do our current platforms allow providers to easily track their patients’ day-to-day health?
2. See if your current technology tracks appointment no-shows, appointment billed, and total touchpoints.

3. Look for a solution that provides real-time outcomes data so you can track the health of your virtual treatment programs across your organization.

Actions for healthcare leaders

4. Measurement and aftercare

Virtual treatment programs
powered by OnCall

Virtual treatment programs delivered through disconnected products

Understand the impact of virtual care and launch additional virtual programs under the same solution.

Virtual programs and patient data are not tracked and launching other virtual programs is not possible.

  • Automatically measure results like appointments billed and no-shows to understand the impact of your virtual programs.
  • Add additional programming to your branded solution with unique workflows for aftercare or other programs.
  • Automatically and securely share personalized content with clients through OnCall, like PHQ-9s and assignments with rich media.
  • Business metrics and patient data are not tracked at all.
  • Multiple treatment programs cannot be configured and delivered through one platform, so they are disjointed or are not offered at all.
4. Measurement and aftercare

Takeaways

Organizations need the ability to measure the effects of virtual care on clients, providers, and their organization. These metrics can help inform business decisions, like whether to build new programs or hire more providers.

Complete solutions help you execute on these decisions, by enabling you to configure new programs that target specific groups, care verticals, and teams. It’s all based on the data presented through your automated analytics dashboard.

Actions for healthcare leaders

1. Start by asking questions: Do our current platforms allow providers to easily track their patients’ day-to-day health?
2. See if your current technology tracks appointment no-shows, appointment billed, and total touchpoints.
3. Look for a solution that provides real-time outcomes data so you can track the health of your virtual treatment programs across your organization.
Actions for healthcare leaders

Conclusion

There are many considerations for behavioural health and addictions organizations looking to evolve and champion comprehensive programming for their virtual treatment programs. By reimagining how your organization and providers deliver virtual care–choosing technology that delivers the same if not a superior experience than in-person treatment– you can evolve how your organization delivers care with more than just a simple video call. To do this, healthcare leaders need to challenge the purpose of their technology and reexamine their understanding of telehealth, looking at ways in which end-to-end solutions like OnCall can create better care experiences and power business growth.

Improve your patient experience and deliver comprehensive treatment programs

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1. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital/telehealth-s-post-pandemic-future-where-do-we-go-here

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