Many studies have shown that receiving mental health treatment might be difficult to obtain. More than a third of the country’s 10.4 million individuals with severe mental illness lacked access to mental health care in only 2016 alone. A combination of these factors, including the current COVID-19 epidemic, suggests that mental health treatment may become even more difficult to get.
Thanks to advances in technology, such as telehealth, it is now possible to reduce the growing distance between healthcare practitioners and their patients.
In order to promote this, regulations have already been altered. Most privacy, regional and origination location constraints on the use of telehealth have been removed. This makes it simpler for patients and therapists to explore telehealth.
The restrictions have been eased and the increase in medical reimbursements have encouraged medical health providers to assist patients to transition from office visits to telehealth sessions.
Clinicast has listed some of these issues and recommendations on how to deal with them have been provided below so that more patients will feel at ease while using telehealth services.
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Challenges
- Financial burden: Telehealth services are often not fully covered by Medicare or many other insurance providers. As a result, patients are deterred from using telehealth services since they are required to make co-payments or pay out-of-pocket.
- Care quality concerns: Even though telehealth is not a new concept, it has yet to be widely adopted. When telehealth is compared to regular in-office visits, many patients are concerned about the level of care and assistance they will get. This is an issue that affects a wide range of people, not just those in mental health care. More than 48% of patients surveyed felt that the quality of treatment they get in a telehealth session is inferior than in a doctor’s office visit, according to a poll.
- Lack of awareness: Many people don’t know that their healthcare providers provide telehealth services in any way. A recent poll found that 33% of participants were unclear whether or not they had access to telehealth services, while 21% believed they did not.
3 Tips to Improve Telehealth Adoption
Advocate the benefits of Telehealth: Patients may require a little prodding to use new services, particularly if they have little or no prior familiarity with them. Instead, than relying on your patient to seek out the advantages of telehealth, you should be the one to bring them to their attention. Remind patients of the benefits of virtual therapy sessions, such as shorter wait times, more convenience, and a reduction in out-of-pocket expenses. Eliminating the need to go to a facility to obtain treatment is essential in an age where people are discouraged from making unnecessarily long trips. Furthermore, when telehealth meets the HIPAA compliance requirements, it ensures that patients’ medical data, including their medical history and insurance information, is protected and secured in accordance with the law.
Raise awareness: Inform your patients about the availability of telehealth sessions via a variety of means. You may reach out to them through email and electronic newsletters. You may also make the announcement on your practice’s social media accounts and website. The precise services you provide electronically and the methods you use should be included in all forms of communication. Is it through a phone or laptop? Is it only audio, or does it also include video? What methods are used to make appointments? Avoid apologizing for providing telemedicine sessions in lieu of in-office sessions and instead focus on the benefits of telehealth.
Optimize patient experience: To get patients on board with telehealth, this is perhaps the most important step to take. It is essential that you enhance the patient’s experience throughout your virtual consultations. Patients are less likely to return to virtual treatment if their first experience is unpleasant.
Tips to Ensure Excellent Patient Experience
Be adequately prepared: Be as prepared for your telehealth sessions as you would be for face-to-face consultations with our patients. If telehealth treatment sessions are video-enabled, be aware of your personal and environmental appearance.
Be on time. The elimination (or at least decrease) of wait periods is a big value add of telehealth, and lateness negates this.
Review your communication best practices. You must be aware of the distinctions between best practices for office visits and those for telehealth sessions and change them as appropriate.
Provide easy instructions: If you’re a doctor, make it simple for your patients to connect with you through telehealth. Preparing patients ahead of time and on a continuous basis to help them comprehend the procedure is the best option.
These pointers aren’t limited to self-care for those with mental illness. Healthcare providers and their patients of all specialties are able to profit from them. Patients will accept telehealth more quickly if they have a positive patient experience.
Address patient concerns: It’s not uncommon for patients to have worries regarding the expense of telehealth treatment and whether or not their insurance will cover it. Patients’ worries may be eased if they have access to accurate information and services about their financial obligations. As a result of COVID-19, the U.S government has increased the Medicare coverage of telemedicine services for the elderly. Prior to this, only a small portion of telehealth services were covered by Medicare. Copayments and coinsurance expenses are also being waived for individuals who need to get telemedicine treatment as a result of the pandemic. In order to enhance telehealth use, it’s important to educate patients to understand their choices and whether waivers are applicable.
Figure out preferences: When conducting telehealth treatment sessions, it is critical to determine which equipment and technologies patients are most at ease with. Depending on your resources, you may either customize your services to meet the preferences of individual patients or adapt to the demands of the majority of patients.
Think about the kind of patients that you serve when you’re trying to encourage them to use telehealth. Different age groups have different views regarding virtual care and different degrees of technological know-how than the rest.
Bottom Line
You should not think about telehealth as a temporary replacement for in-person appointments. In the future, telehealth will continue to be valuable for your clinic and patients, regardless of COVID-19. For information and guidance on telehealth adoption feel free to contact Clinicast.