Leveraging Telehealth to Increase Practice Profitability

Increase Profitability with Telehealth

In the height of the pandemic, many practices turned towards telehealth as a means to treat patients with less critical needs. This enabled physicians to keep exposure risk low while still providing care for patients in need. Now that restrictions are being lifted, but many continue to limit unnecessary trips, some practice find that telehealth may still be a viable care vehicle for their practice’s processes. Virtual visits aren’t a one size fits all, but they certainly have a time, place, and purpose in a practice. Now, how can your practice leverage telehealth services to increase practice profitability? Let’s dive in.

Increase in Patient Load

When a practice decides to implement telehealth services, they enable themselves to see more patients throughout the day. Most insurance companies have a set amount of time that these visit types can last. Also, they often have shorter wait times. Due to the regulated amount of time for telehealth visits, practices are able to schedule more visits per hour and see more patients throughout the day. When a practice chooses to only utilize in-person visits, the visits can go on for any amount of time due to them being less structured and more guided by the patient.

A perk for providers is that they can see more patients, leading to more money coming in the door. This happens all while they are working the same hours. Your practice will likely not be able to completely shift to telehealth visits. With that being said, dedicating a member of your team or a day or two of the week to telehealth can drastically improve your bottom line. Leveraging telehealth services at your practice enables you to increase your patient load and increase profitability all at once.

Receive Reimbursement for Telephone Follow-up

For many providers, telephone calls to follow up with patients aren’t a profitable means of interaction. It isn’t viewed as a meaningful encounter or a way to receive reimbursement…until now. Some virtual visits are, in fact, simply telephone calls with a patient discussing concerns or going over lab results or blood work. Providers are now able to get paid for this, if they are utilizing a telehealth application. Increase your payments and keep your bottom line green for the work that your practice is already doing.

Expand Practice Operating Hours

Your practice has increased flexibility when choosing to tackle telehealth visits! This means that you can expand hours to meet a different segment of your patient base, perhaps after regular work hours or during the weekend. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll need to have your practice doors open, as telehealth provides you the advantage to provide care anywhere. This not only relieves pressure of excess overhead costs, but allows you to expand operating hours on your watch. You can provide care to those who may not have been able to access it otherwise due to time constraints. You are then able to provide care to more patients and increase your cash flow. These positively impact your organization and help keep your patients happy and your organization profitable.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of how leveraging telehealth keeps your practice profitable. Telehealth also helps to decrease no shows, last minute cancellations, and improve overall office efficiency. Is your practice currently utilizing a telehealth solution to increase profits at your practice? Let us know in the comments. If you aren’t, what’s holding you back?

Are you interested in learning about MicroMD Virtual Visits powered by Medpod and profitability? Visit us at micromd.com or call us at 800.624.8832.