How to get clinicians more comfortable with delivering telemedicine

A physician expert in virtual care discusses building familiarity, using pilot projects and managing scheduling carefully.

He offered advice on how to get clinicians more comfortable with virtual care, how pilot projects can help and what they should look like, and the importance of smart telemedicine scheduling. Not only will it help get the clinic staff on the same page, but it also will make those initial virtual visits with patients feel much more positive and seamless. In reality, a lot of how one is set up has much to do with what a clinic feels it needs to successfully have online doctor appointments for years to come. That said, one way to approach a pilot project is for a clinic to identify a group of patients it believes would be interested in testing out its telemedicine services. Clinics would ask these patients to book an online appointment and go through the process. In terms of how long this type of pilot project should last, I'd recommend only keeping it active until the clinic feels comfortable and confident about introducing virtual visits to all patients. A. Whether patient appointments are in-person or virtual, a medical clinic should always do its best to create a schedule that is manageable for the doctor. For example, a clinic can inform patients that online appointments will only be scheduled on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 1-4 p.m. Once the clinic has become more comfortable in how it conducts telemedicine appointments, the scheduling routine can be adjusted to best meet physician preferences and patient needs.