Following Up With the Patient

1. Reminding the Patient About the Appointment

Reminder messages are essential in telehealth. Ideally, reminder messages should be delivered a day prior to and 15 minutes before the scheduled appointment time. Email and text are both useful. The medical record should contain the patient's preferred method of communication. Keep in mind many people have text and usage limits on their phone plans. In addition, the reminder should include detailed information about the check-in process and provide a link to the meeting.

2. Keeping the Patient Engaged

According to Wetter (2020), “when patients are more involved and engaged with their care management and understand how to take cautious and preventative measures, they are more likely to participate in actionable solutions and interventions.” He extends this to telehealth. Use the tips within this course to keep patients interested and engaged in using telehealth. Frequently communicate with them, provide updates on telehealth features, and make it simple and easy for them to make telehealth appointments.

3. Collecting Customer Feedback

The voice of the customer is essential to improving the patient’s experience with your telehealth services. Collect feedback in real-time if possible on the entire telehealth experience, ideally at the conclusion of the visit so you can fix any major issues quickly and then track and trend the others for performance improvement. Include the scheduling process, pre-and post-visit support, and any secure messaging or non-visit check-ins. Make sure you have a diverse group of patients in the survey, including marginal groups and those with disabilities.

hint

If you want your survey to be even simpler, you could ask patients the Net Promoter Score question at the conclusion of each encounter: “How likely would you be to refer this service to a friend?”

4. Reflect: Introducing a Telehealth Program

Reflect on the previous sections, specifically the printed resource examples. Focus on how to introduce and discuss telehealth with patients and educate them on its use.

reflect

1. Identify the steps you would provide for patients to access the platform. What else would you include beyond what was mentioned in this course? Are there any additional questions that may be important for your patient population, specifically?
2. Think about a resource you may provide to introduce telehealth to your patients. How would you disperse this? Would you use social media or your website to help promote this resource? What additional modes can you think of that would work well for your patients?
3. What challenges can you identify for introducing telehealth to patients? What would you put in place in the above to help minimize this?

Authored by Cindy Ebner, MSN, RN, CPHRM, FASHRM and Melissa A. Singer Pressman, PhD, MLIS

Support

If you are struggling with a concept or terminology in the course, you may contact TelehealthSupport@capella.edu for assistance.

If you are having technical issues, please contact learningcoach@sophia.org.