The demand for telemedicine solutions is steadily rising, as patients want more convenient methods to communicate with their healthcare providers. Some patients are too busy or live too far away from a clinic to receive regular medical care. Introducing virtual appointments and online scheduling would go a long way towards improving patient access to medical care.

Healthcare providers that want to introduce new features to their clinics should choose a telemedicine solution that integrates with their EHR or practice management system. With proper integration, the telemedicine solution can streamline day-to-day clinic tasks, such as scheduling and data collection. 

Why is integration so crucial? Using a telemedicine solution that doesn’t integrate with AthenaHealth can only add to the clinic staff’s workload. The staff would still have to input the data that is acquired through the solution into the EHR, nullifying the benefits it might provide. 

If you’re looking for a telemedicine solution that integrates with AthenaHealth and provides valuable features, Curogram fits the bill perfectly. One of the ways Curogram stands out compared to the competition is that it doesn’t waste your time. You can set up your virtual clinic within 48 hours or less. 

The Importance of Integrating Telemedicine Solutions With AthenaHealth

Digital solutions have become an essential part of modern medicine. While many healthcare providers invest in EHRs such as AthenaHealth, only a small percentage of them have enabled virtual appointments to their patients. 

Enabling telemedicine features can be a massive undertaking, but the numbers suggest that it’s worthwhile. Studies have shown that clinics can save from $20 to $120 per patient visit by implementing telemedicine and two-way texting.

What makes digital solutions cost-effective is the fact that they improve workflow in clinics. The initial integration can be costly, but you'll boost your clinic’s profitability significantly in the long run.

A telemedicine solution reduces the amount of administrative work in the clinic and creates a more productive environment. Instead of entering data into the EHR manually, clinic staff will have more time to admit more patients. 

When you integrate Curogram with AthenaHealth, our software connects with your Patient Database of Record and Schedule of Record to facilitate tasks such as data entry and appointment scheduling.

Curogram’s two-way texting feature allows patients to text their physicians with questions or to schedule a meeting. 

Integrating a telemedicine solution will improve your clinic’s workflow, allowing you to admit more patients, which leads to higher revenue. 

What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine Integration With AthenaHealth?

Take a look at some of the most notable benefits of integrating telemedicine software with your EHR:

  1. Bigger patient pool
  2. Less paperwork
  3. Accurate data transfer

Provide Care to Remote Patients

Many patients can’t visit their healthcare providers regularly. Some are located too far from their primary healthcare facilities to receive regular care in person. 

By providing patients with telemedicine solutions, you can enable remote communication via texting and virtual appointments. 

Enabling long-distance care allows you to admit a larger number of remote patients, increasing your revenue even further. 

Cut Back on Paperwork

Paperwork takes up a significant chunk of everyday clinic work. Doctors are estimated to spend as much as two-thirds of their workday doing paperwork. When collecting patient data, clinic staff must transcribe information from paper patient intake forms, which is a process that takes time. 

With the help of telemedicine solutions, you can cut back on the unnecessary paperwork in day-to-day clinic work. 

Curogram integrates with your EHR and lets patients submit info via their phones or desktop computers. All the data is uploaded to your EHR automatically, meaning that staff doesn’t have to transcribe paper forms. 

With less paperwork, physicians and front desk staff can spend their workday more productively. 

Input Data Without Errors

Patient data must be recorded accurately so that physicians can diagnose and treat patients adequately. The issue with manual data entry is that you can never guarantee 100% accuracy. Clinic staff make mistakes, and patients don’t always have legible handwriting. 

By integrating a telemedicine solution like Curogram, you can eliminate any chance of data entry error. Patients don’t have to write down anything by hand if they can fill out forms on their phones. 

Curogram Integration With AthenaHealth Enables Seamless Telemedicine & Two-Way Texting

EHR integration with telemedicine software can take anywhere between six and nine months. The process includes:

  1. Negotiating with the vendor
  2. Creating a complex infrastructure with IT assistance
  3. Training the staff to use the software

Curogram doesn’t take as long to integrate as other telemedicine solutions. You can connect our software to AthenaHealth within 48h and start setting up your virtual clinic. 

Avoid the Administrative Hassle

Before you can integrate a telemedicine solution, you must wait until you get a price quote from the vendor. After receiving a quote, you have to negotiate and sign a contract. It’s a time-consuming process that delays the integration. 

With Curogram, you don’t have to draw up a contract. Once you’ve integrated our software, you enter into a Business Associate Agreement automatically. You can bypass the administrative hassle and start using telemedicine features immediately. 

Integrate Curogram Without Having To Hire an IT Expert

Unlike other telemedicine solutions, Curogram’s integration process is simple. There’s no need to hire an IT expert and spend thousands of dollars to create complex IT infrastructure, as you can do everything on your own. 

Once our software connects with your EHR, it inputs the following patient data automatically:

  • Date of birth
  • Email
  • Name
  • Phone number

As for appointment information, Curogram inputs the following data:

  • Appointment types
  • Appointment times
  • Provider
  • Location

Train Staff in Five Minutes

A clinic’s staff must learn how to navigate a new piece of software properly before using it to admit and process patients. For many telemedicine solutions, training staff can take days or weeks. 

After integrating Curogram, you won’t need more than five minutes to train staff to use it. Our user interface is simple and straightforward, which means any member of your staff can adapt to our diverse set of features in a jiffy.

Differentiate Between Virtual and In-Person Visits 

After introducing virtual appointments, it’s crucial for your telemedicine software to tell them apart for scheduling. The timing for reminders should also differ depending on whether it’s an in-person or virtual appointment. 

If the patient must be present at the clinic for a visit, they should receive a reminder several hours before it begins. They need to find adequate transportation and reach their healthcare provider, which might take time. 

For virtual appointments, the patient doesn’t need more than a fifteen-minute heads-up. They don’t have to step outside their home, so travel time isn’t an issue. 

Curogram takes both types of appointments into account and sets adequate reminders when you schedule them. 

Create and Customize Electronic Patient Intake Forms 

Curogram can help you simplify collecting patient data by replacing burdensome paper patient intake forms with digital alternatives. 

Our electronic patient intake forms help you avoid manual data entry. Instead of having clinic staff transcribe patient data from forms into the EHR, you can let patients submit their data electronically through a smartphone or desktop computer. Curogram then uploads the data into your EHR automatically, so clinic staff doesn’t have to spend valuable time dealing with tedious paperwork.

Patients might require different forms depending on their type of appointment or medical problem. You can send specific, customized forms to patients that will help their physician gather all necessary info before an appointment starts. 

Send Customized Reminders by Appointment Type and Location

You want to send appropriate reminders for patients so that they are well-prepared for their visits. You can customize reminders to let patients know if they need to provide additional documentation or photographs of visible conditions. 

For in-person visits, it’s crucial that you include information like the exact address of the clinic. If it’s a difficult-to-reach location, you can add instructions to help patients navigate towards it and find a parking slot. 

How To Evaluate a Telemedicine Solution

If you don’t know much about telemedicine software, evaluating it can be a challenging task. 

The best course of action is to have a lengthy discussion with the telemedicine vendor. Ask them key questions about their software, and see if it can help increase your clinic’s productivity. Start with these questions:

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

Must-Have Features for a Telemedicine Solution

Telemedicine software varies dramatically when it comes to offered features. Some solutions only feature core functionalities that don’t have a drastic impact on clinic productivity. 

Before you decide to integrate a telemedicine solution, make sure that it offers the following features:

  1. Online scheduling
  2. Two-way SMS messaging
  3. Virtual waiting rooms
  4. Smart appointment reminders
  5. Electronic patient intake forms

Simplify Scheduling

Without telemedicine integration, scheduling is a tedious task. Patients spend a long time trying to reach front desk staff, after which they can only hope that there are available time slots in the physician’s schedule. 

Curogram’s smart schedule simplifies appointment making. Patients can view all the available time slots, choose the one that suits them, and schedule an appointment from their phone or desktop computer. Clinic staff doesn’t have to do any extra work, and patients can reschedule without hassle. 

Enable Secure Two-Way Texting

Patients and their physicians want more convenient ways to communicate, and texting might be the best option available. Studies have shown that people read over 90% of the texts they receive within three minutes. With texting, doctors can schedule appointments and answer patient questions quickly and make sure that patients see important messages. 

What sets Curogram apart from most telemedicine solutions is that it can offer secure and reliable two-way texting features. We can generate a local number for your clinic, which you can then connect with your Google business profile, making it easier for patients to contact you. 

Patients can use our HIPAA-compliant texting feature to do the following:

  • Schedule appointments
  • Send inquiries
  • Reschedule appointments
  • Receive reminders

Set Up a Virtual Waiting Room

When introducing virtual appointments, healthcare providers should do their best to replicate the in-person workflow their doctors, staff, and patients are used to. 

Using Curogram’s virtual waiting room feature, you can emulate the workflow of a real clinic and make it simpler to admit and provide care to patients. You can set up an active queue for patients so that they can go through the standard process of providing information to the front desk staff and then communicate with their physician. 

It’s possible to set up the virtual waiting room view so that a staff member can only see and invite a patient if they are next in line to process them. This way, a physician will never invite a patient to a virtual appointment before the front desk staff checks them in.

Keep Patients Up to Date

If you want to remind patients about their appointments effectively, you need smarter reminders. Calling patients to remind them of an appointment doesn’t work well enough, as patients hesitate to answer calls from unknown numbers.

Curogram can integrate with your reminders and send them automatically. Our text appointment reminders are fully customizable, so you can regulate how many reminders you want to send and at which intervals. With enough text reminders, you can help patients remember their appointments and reduce the number of no-shows by 75%!

Leverage Electronic Patient Intake Forms

Collecting patient information takes a lot of time and effort. Patients normally fill out paper forms at a clinic, and the staff then transcribe the information into the EHR. While useful, paper intake forms cause numerous issues:

  1. Patients form crowds in waiting rooms
  2. Paper forms take a while to transcribe
  3. Errors can happen due to illegible handwriting
  4. Paperwork has to be stored in the clinic

Electronic patient intake forms resolve all of these issues and provide a more streamlined way to collect patient information. You can send patients links to customized intake forms that they can fill out on their phones or desktop computers. When they submit a form, the data is uploaded to AthenaHealth automatically. Clinic staff doesn’t have to lift a finger to collect the info, saving them from hours of unnecessary paperwork. 

Patients prefer the electronic intake form system, as they don’t have to go to a clinic to submit information. For doctors, one of the premier benefits is that they can access patient data before an appointment begins, whether it’s in person or virtual. 

Integrate AthenaHealth With Curogram for a Smooth Telemedicine Start

Telemedicine solutions are the future of healthcare. They provide convenient communication methods for remote patients while also increasing clinic workflow efficiency dramatically. By integrating Curogram, you can have access to a larger pool of patients from more diverse areas.