Thursday, May 5, 2016

Effective Strategies For Telemedicine Implementation

By Betty Smith


With the current revolution in the healthcare industry, patients can receive care services without necessarily travelling to the hospitals. They can schedule appointment via the online platform and communicate with physicians through phone calls, video conferences, and text messages. When experienced and competent professionals carry out telemedicine implementation, the mortality rates can significantly reduce since access to quality care services will improve. Hospitals will manage to provide quality services at a budget friendly cost and people will leave a comfortable life free from diseases. The needs of patients are handled by cloud-based medical experts, digital health coaches, and web consultants. Telemedicine rooms are equipped with sophisticated equipment and tools for effective service delivery.

One of the challenges that health facility will have to deal with during the implementation process is administrative engagement. Typically, not all members of executive team will see the value of the expensive process of implementation. As a project manager, you should strive to enlighten the members on the importance of digitizing care services. You must make them to understand that the physicians are armed with technological tools to aid them in delivery of services. Both patients and physicians understand how to use video conferencing tools, text messages, and phones. Most people are keeping in touch through a cloud-based model.

Conducting a market research and establishing the potential it possesses is imperative. You must assess your capabilities and see if the quality of care services you offer addresses the unique needs of communities. Mobilize your executive team and encourage them to engage with the community at diverse levels and find out healthcare services that are needed by the community. Analysis of patient outcome data can help you to know the type of services required by a particular community.

After gathering information from the market assessment, conducting a self-assessment is recommendable. You must evaluate the capabilities of your healthcare facilities and find out if you have the right equipment and trained personnel to offer the services that the patients require. For instance, if want to offer pediatric neurology service, you must have enough pediatric neurologist who are interested in telemedicine provision. Identifying the starting point can be a difficult task. Therefore, a committee comprised of stakeholders should be tasked with the duties of carrying out readiness assessment and determining the starting points.

Ensure goals of the telemedicine program are aligning with mission and vision of your hospital. The hospital leader will support the program when they are convinced the hospital stands to benefit if the project is properly implemented. The goals must be clear and realistic.

Allocate enough time for each stage and adhere to the timeline effectively. You should have a clear plan for dealing with emergencies and challenges. Factors that affect proper implementation include the size of healthcare and program goals.

When you have the right support from the administrative team, the implantation process becomes easy. You will have access to enough resource and receive support for dealing with complex project. Encourage the patients to use technological tools and seek healthcare services from cloud-based physicians.

Addressing the needs of patients via telemedicine enables physicians to delegate their duties effectively. They are able to manage patients who have minor issues and deal with those who require serious care. The providers of care services must be trained effectively to guarantee effective implementation of the program.




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