Telemedicine platforms are well understood to offer significant advantages to patient-centered care, from patient information management to decreased hospital readmissions.
mhealth and telehealth programs can also be a road to improving the profitability of care practice. Adding advanced telehealth solutions to your routine can push up your hospital revenue.
Smart choices on how to spend money are essential for care management, so it makes sense that clinicians want to take into account the economic impact of expenditure on telehealth services receiving significant telehealth benefits. Although it might cost you a little upfront to buy the best telemedicine software, the Telehealth ROI may be substantial for your practice.
However, after you launch an excellent telehealth business model, for a hospital management system the initial expenses will pay off for your private practice as a telemedicine doctor in a significant way.
Here is how the critical benefits of telemedicine can increase your practice revenue.
Increased Patient Retention
Your patients can contact you via digital patient engagement solutions. So, when they have questions or immediate complaints, they are less likely to go to nearby urgent care clinics or end up paying a hefty ER bill for an unwanted appointment.
This increased patient engagement allows you to keep your patients comfortable, safe, and faithful to your practice. With the telehealth benefits, patients who find it daunting to turn up can attend their visits without difficulty.
With telemedicine, the power to manage a concise timeline for the appointment. Patients need not leave their house or office to be seen by the doctor. Further exposure to hospital-acquired infection decreases. Significant telehealth benefits include e-prescription refill, view test results online, schedule appointments, disease management, and many more.
Extended Coverage for Telemedicine Specialist and Referring Doctors
The virtual visit helps clinicians do more for little, expanding access to treatment and encouraging the clinical teams to function more effectively. Now connected care and home telehealth extends the coverage of telemedicine specialists to inaccessible areas.
How does telemedicine work when, in general, virtual visits are purchased out-of-pocket by customers, but some insurers are starting to reimburse the program because they think it is cost-effective and increases patient satisfaction.
For patients these days, time now is more important. By giving them additional choices, physician practices will illustrate to patients that their time is worth it. Telehealth encourages practices to provide same-day or on-demand appointments with their patients.
Practices are likely to discourage patients from running down to the closest retail pharmacy, trauma rooms, or ERs by providing these facilities. Patients are allowed to arrange their appointments to practice by telehealth.
Get Reimbursed for Virtual Patient Visit and Follow-up
FQHCs guidelines are clearly defined in the Final Rule of the 2020 Medicare Physician Fee Plan and valid even after the national emergency reduction of COVID 19. Now a “Virtual Check-in” with an online patient interface requires reimbursement levels depending on the total time spent.
The excellent news for telehealth providers is that starting March 6, 2020, Medicare will pay for professional services rendered to recipients in all parts of the world in all environments for the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency period.
Unlike Medicare telehealth appointments, which include the audio and visual capability for real-time communication, remote check-ins can be completed using a wider variety of communication tools. Virtual check-in services are reported when the telehealth billing practice with telemedicine billing codes 2020 has an established relationship with the patient.
Decreased Overhead Healthcare Costs
Telemedicine is simply a more convenient means for treatment to be provided. The key telemedicine benefits include terminating overhead costs while reducing the total time spent per experience with patients.
Research from Nemours Children’s Health System concluded that practices save $24 per patient in overhead expenses for a telehealth session. It also revealed telemedicine benefits for patients, who hold $50 in travel expenses per visit on average.
Well, digital technologies bring both telehealth benefits and challenges because new technology may be challenging for senior citizens. And it was puzzling for healthcare providers regarding the Telehealth ROI.
However, among significant uses, telehealth systems allow practices to keep track of many aspects. Making virtual appointments with patients helps to optimize the clinic’s efficacy and even patient flow, which can help fill up the doctor’s appointment calendar. So, patients will check-in online, which can reduce the workload of the practice workers.
Increased Practice Revenue
Adding home telehealth to the family health practice or primary care clinic is, in itself, an excellent telehealth model ROI for Telemedicine opportunities and a fantastic future for telemedicine companies.
You will use virtual visits to push patient referrals and ask patients to share online feedback about their experiences when you get the telehealth business model up-and-running. All adds up to a more robust, more effective practice with improved Telehealth ROI.
The revolution of healthcare information is already here. Healthcare providers have more access to EDI solutions, diagnostic testing and recovery plans, pharmacy data management than ever before. Medical applications and health cloud solutions make it easy to handle health workflows, increase teamwork, and improve patient outcomes. Process integration and data access ensure that knowledge and research are more important, and all these factors contribute to increased practice revenue.
Insurance Reimbursement
A clean claim’s appearance relates explicitly to how easily a provider generates an insurance provider’s premium. A clean license is a medical claim that is appropriately made for the first time resulting in a quicker payout turnaround than whether a request is refused or declined, directly affecting your revenue impact.
To safeguard and leverage your telehealth & medicare timely payments and positively affect their medical practice income, providers must increase their clean claims. The easiest, most cost-effective way to do so is to work with a provider of RCM services and a partner in management technologies specializing in clean claims. Together, they can work with your staff to clean your statements and recognize the most frequent reasons for denials at your practice so you can start healing.
A clean claim is one of the pros of telemedicine that will boost your hospital revenue. Healthcare automation technology has the immediate ability to make your facility, clinic, or medical institution work more smoothly and come up with excellent healthcare revenue cycle management solutions by significantly reducing your revenue cycle timeline.
Increased Practice Efficiency and Patient Care
A streamlined patient scheduling system and easy telehealth virtual visits check-in ensure that you keep the clinic going smoothly and bring more patients in and out without losing patient loyalty. With the smart and connected health benefits of telemedicine for patients, they can quickly do a fast check-in with you or ask a question. Thus, they are more likely to schedule another appointment.
Increased Patient Flow and Convenient Care
With so many patients disappointed by lengthy waiting hours, it is more likely that patients looking for a new physician will move to a care practice that has a quicker way to get treatment.
When you invest in a telehealth program, the telemedicine opportunities enable you to interact with your patients and deliver convenient care frequently.
This connected health care and increased participation campaigns will also combat obesity and tobacco and alcohol consumption rates by empowering you to motivate your patients’ healthier lifestyle decisions.
Increased Appointment by Reduced Time and Filling Patient Cancelation
Telehealth video conferencing can fill gaps in the schedule, maximizing paid hours. They can contribute to fewer-staff in the workplace, facilitating comfort for patients who reduce some of the staff members’ workloads. Thus, it leads to increased online and off-line patient loyalty and decreases the risk of data entry errors and other administrative mistakes.
The key telehealth benefit for enhancing revenue is that appointments with telemedicine doctors eliminate no-shows. Patients via telehealth technology can be seen remotely in their homes, minimizing the expenditures and time involved with seeking a typical visit to the facility. Research done by Dr. Corey Joekel found that telemedicine decreased no-show rates by 50%
Every missed appointment from doctors indicates a direct impact on the doctor’s on-demand revenue and an opportunity cost. Telemedicine eliminates no-shows and encourages you to treat patients faster and more efficiently. If you have a no-show, filling the appointment with a virtual visit from a telehealth system for providers to recover revenue is easy.
Virtual Care for Rural Patients
The significant telehealth advantage is that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued guidelines authorizing remote site telehealth services to be delivered by federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and rural health clinics (RHCs).
Earlier CMS only reimbursed for virtual appointments for specific rural areas, and the physical presence of patients was necessary for the communication. The CMS re-emphasized the telehealth benefits guidelines introduced during the 2019 and 2020 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rules, with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and extended the previous telemedicine reimbursement regulations.
The latest CMS guidelines demand parity for telehealth reimbursement at the same cost as an in-person experience. This new rule popped up that telehealth benefits make the ROI of telehealth transparent when you pair this reimbursement rate with the cost benefits gained by telehealth virtual visits.
The shortage of doctors attracts telehealth in rural areas as telehealth benefits with many specialist doctors. Thus, integrated healthcare solutions and payment processing boost your practice for remote patient monitoring with telehealth model ROI when you invest in a telehealth program. From a revenue cycle hospital generating perspective, healthcare professionals can receive payment simultaneously as an in-person visit is essential.
On average, telemedicine appointments take less time than a regular in-person meeting. Although telemedicine is not sufficient for all holidays, the virtual house call is now the norm of treatment for certain forms of traditional experiences.
After-hour Practice from Home
Patient problems, refill orders, urgent after-hours inquiries from patients will all add up over time of unbillable time. Telehealth benefits substitute such phone calls into paid virtual visits.
Your practice will boost revenue and promote the flexibility to make online patient scheduling outside regular business hours.
Thus, reimbursement of after-hour calls or virtual-visit is added to telehealth benefits for increasing patient revenue.
Conclusion
Although this topic of medical practice has focused on telemedicine as a revenue source, indeed, the system is not suitable for therapeutic experiences at all times. However, more than three studies support telemedicine as a gateway for more effective, secure, and high-quality healthcare practice management after extensive research.
References:
https://chironhealth.com/blog/how-to-increase-practice-revenue-with-telemedicine/
https://getreferralmd.com/2020/08/7-ways-your-healthcare-practice-can-generate-revenue-with-telemedicine/
https://www.aafp.org/journals/fpm/blogs/gettingpaid/entry/FQHC_covid_telehealth.html
https://evisit.com/resources/10-pros-and-cons-of-telemedicine/
https://hsgadvisors.com/articles/reimbursement-for-virtual-patient-visit-interactions/
https://www.healthline.com/health/healthcare-provider/telemedicine-benefits#benefits
https://blog.evisit.com/virtual-care-blog/7-ways-telehealth-improves-revenue-for-physicians
https://hsgadvisors.com/articles/reimbursement-for-virtual-patient-visit-interactions/
https://getreferralmd.com/2020/08/7-ways-your-healthcare-practice-can-generate-revenue-with-telemedicine/
https://www.cms.gov/Center/Provider-Type/Federally-Qualified-Health-Centers-FQHC-Center
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About Author
Written by Riken Shah linkedin
Riken's work motto is to help healthcare providers use technological advancements to make healthcare easily accessible to all stakeholders, from providers to patients. Under his leadership and guidance, OSP Labs has successfully developed over 600 customized software solutions for 200+ healthcare clients across continents.