Modern healthcare providers have to enable long-distance medical care to their patients just so their patients don’t have to travel all the time. For millions of people in the rural United States, telemedicine is the only viable way to receive required medical attention.

That said, for many medical practices, enabling telemedicine can be confusing. For one, it is essential that your telemedicine solution integrates with your EHR. Non-integrated software actually increases your staff’s workload. Any data collected with a non-integrated solution must be inputted into the EHR manually. 

With telemedicine integration, you can introduce new features while also reducing the amount of work for the staff. When you connect a telemedicine solution like Curogram with AcuityScheduling, you can facilitate day-to-day clinic tasks, such as:

• Scheduling 
• Rescheduling
• Collecting patient data
• Sending lab results and visit summaries
• Reminding patients of appointments

What patients want most out of telemedicine solutions is the ability to text their consumers or physicians. While this feature is highly sought-after, only some telemedicine vendors can offer it. The main hurdle is that traditional texting isn’t HIPAA compliant. Sending protected health information (PHI) via a non-secure solution leads to fines or even criminal charges. 

Why is AcuityScheduling integration crucial for healthcare providers?

The world of medicine is becoming more digital every year. More and more healthcare providers are looking to implement digital solutions in their clinics.

To stay competitive, most healthcare providers have implemented EHRs. However, that’s only the first step in the modernization of medicine. Many clinics still shy away from integrating telemedicine solutions because of the potential drawbacks, such as:

• It can take too long to set up
• It costs too much
• It may require extensive employee training

While there can be downsides to integrating telemedicine software, the process provides extensive benefits to healthcare providers.

Clinic staff spend a lot of time dealing with administrative tasks, such as manual data entry. An integrated telemedicine solution can minimize or eliminate some of these tasks, giving staff more time to focus on patients.

Certain telemedicine features make it easier to admit and care for patients that live far away from your clinic. For example, rural patients can communicate with their physicians using virtual appointments instead of coming into the clinic in person. That allows them to have more frequent visits when their condition necessitates it. 

By increasing the number of patients you admit, you also increase your clinic’s revenue. You can have a seamless workflow when you integrate a telemedicine solution, such as Curogram, with AcuityScheduling. Curogram has comprehensive features like 2-way text messaging that works perfectly with AcuityScheduling for appointment reminders as you can receive them via text message.

What are the main benefits of integrating a telemedicine solution with AcuityScheduling?

Many healthcare providers hesitate to integrate telemedicine solutions because they are unaware of the benefits. Here are some of the most notable advantages of using telemedicine features:

Minimize missed appointments

Patient no-shows are an enormous problem for clinics. In fact, missed appointments cost healthcare providers over $150 billion per year. 

Texting solutions can help curb patient no-shows. After integrating AcuityScheduling and a telemedicine solution that offers SMS messaging, you can set up automated text appointment reminders and configure them to get sent at different intervals to decrease patient no-shows. 

Improve the workflow of your practice

Telemedicine solutions can streamline many tedious clinic tasks, such as scheduling appointments, answering patient queries, and collecting health information. 

By implementing features such as electronic patient intake forms and automated text answers, you can simplify these tasks and reduce the clinic staff’s workload.

Provide patients with more convenient options

Some patients may prefer more convenience when receiving care from their healthcare providers. They may not want to spend hours calling front desk staff to ask questions or filling out paper forms in waiting rooms. 

With the help of telemedicine solutions, you can provide patients with a more streamlined healthcare experience. 

Instead of calling the clinic to ask a question, patients can send text messages and go on with their day. Clinic staff can set up automated responses to common questions, meaning they don’t have to type out every answer manually. 

Furthermore, patients can send electronic intake forms from their phones instead of filling them out in the clinic. If they’ve scheduled an in-person meeting, they can send the form before they show up to the clinic so they don’t have to spend extra time in the waiting room. 

Patients will appreciate the added convenience that you provide with telemedicine solutions. Now that you can integrate telemedicine with AcuityScheduling, online appointment scheduling can be easier and simpler. You don’t have to spend a lot of time just trying to book appointments. With this smart integration, you don’t have to worry about complicated processes.

Evaluating a telemedicine solution. 

Many healthcare providers aren’t familiar with telemedicine software or how it works. To evaluate a telemedicine solution properly, remember to ask telemedicine vendors all of the following questions:

1. Can your telemedicine solution integrate with AcuityScheduling?
2. Does this platform differentiate between in-person and telemedicine visits?
3. Does your telemedicine platform offer two-way real-time texting with the patient?
4. Can you customize your reminders so that you can include patient onboarding instructions?
5. Does your platform offer staff communication?
6. Can you automate your reminders differently depending on the visit type?
7. Does your telemedicine solution offer secure data transfer?
8. What kind of training is required to use the solution?
9. Does your telemedicine system provide unique links for patients so that they don’t have to re-enter registration data?
10. Are there any additional integration costs?
11. How long will the integration process take?
12. Is it HIPAA compliant?

Choosing to invest time, money, and effort in integrating a solution can be difficult when you don’t know anything about telemedicine. Healthcare providers must know how to assess a telemedicine solution before they decide to integrate one. In the following section, you’ll examine the must-haves for telemedicine solutions. 

What features are a must-have for a telemedicine solution?

To increase productivity and improve workflow in your clinic, it’s essential that you integrate a telemedicine solution that offers all of the following features:

Secure texting 

Many patients spend a significant amount of time trying to reach front desk staff via phone. If the staff are busy or occupied with other patients’ calls, there’s not much they can do to speed up the process.

When you integrate telemedicine solutions, its feature must have text messaging where you can send secure links to the documents in an SMS message to ensure that only the intended recipient can access the sensitive medical information. That way, patients can receive lab results and visit summaries in a more convenient format, while your office stays compliant with HIPAA rules and regulations. 

Let patients do the scheduling

Physicians spend a lot of time on the phone setting up appointments. Once a patient calls to schedule a visit, the physician must check their schedule and go back and forth with the patient until they agree on a date. 

When you choose a telemedicine to integrate into your practice, the telemedicine must have an advanced online scheduling feature where your patients can check out the available clinic time slots on their phones and choose a date that suits them. So that when they want to reschedule, they can cancel a visit and choose another time slot with ease. 

A telemedicine with AcuityScheduling integration helps clinic staff cut down on administrative work and reduce the chance of error. Physicians might set up two patient appointments at the same time by accident. With a telemedicine with AcuityScheduling, patients can easily book an appointment quickly as it is user-friendly, making it easy to navigate.

Collect patient data electronically

A telemedicine platform can help minimize the amount of paperwork in your clinic. Curogram’s electronic patient intake forms are easy to use with AcuityScheduling. This helps clinic staff avoid time consuming manual data entry. 

Here’s how electronic patient intake forms work:

1. Clinic staff send patients a link to an electronic intake form 
2. Patients fill out the form on their phones or computers and submit them as PDFs
3. The information is automatically uploaded to your EHR

AcuityScheduling can organize patient information. The feature asks patients to fill out intake forms at the point of booking, so you have everything you need to know about them in one place. 

Virtual waiting rooms

There are numerous settings to simplify patient management in the virtual waiting room. For example, you can set the waiting room view where the front desk staff can only see certain patients they’re assigned to in the virtual waiting room. If the patient hasn’t provided info to the front desk staff yet, they won’t be visible to physicians. Once they’ve been admitted, doctors can invite them to their scheduled appointment.

Set smart reminders

Missed appointments present an enormous cost for healthcare providers. In fact, in the U.S., patients miss 1 in 5 of their scheduled appointments. With Curogram and AcuityScheduling integration, you can send your patients reminders via 2-way text messaging or notify them via smart reminders. 

Integrate an advanced and comprehensive telemedicine solution with Curogram and AcuityScheduling.

Curogram is an all-in-one HIPAA compliant telemedicine platform that can offer your clinic secure HIPAA compliant texting, online patient intake forms and surveys, automated reminders, and seamless appointment scheduling features. 

One of the best parts of choosing our platform is that it only takes 48 hours or less to integrate our telemedicine solution. Once you link Curogram to AcuityScheduling, you can immediately set up a virtual clinic. 

Curogram’s goal is to improve your clinic’s workflow and increase the number of patients you admit. Our software reduces administrative tasks staff by expediting the in-office and other services through our platform’s innovative telemedicine features. To learn more about Curogram, schedule a demo today.