What did COVID do to practices? And how are they coping?

First, a thank you

I want to start with a THANK YOU to you and your providers, care teams, and administrative staff. While your MicroMD team faced new challenges in navigating working from home, your care teams were the ones helping keep people safe and healthy. Not to mention, you have been working hard to ensure the short- and long-term continuity of your practice. It has been no easy feat. Now, on to the topic at hand…

What did COVID do to practices? And how are they coping?

Phase 1 – COVID changes everything. Practices scramble to make speedy, drastic changes.

At the onset of the COVID pandemic, practices were quickly forced to work differently. Some reduced patient visits to only the most critical. Others temporarily closed. Others triaged patients and implemented video visits to augment in-person. Some exclusively relied on video visits. Some provided care by phone and text. Some implemented curbside check-ins. Some had billing staff working from home. In short, practices were forced to work at breakneck speed to assess new ways of providing care while keeping both patients and staff safe while still maintaining revenue.

Phase 2 – Practices evolve. Underutilized technologies experience rapid growth and success.

Prior to the pandemic, many technologies struggled to justify their value to practices that were doing just fine with how they’ve always done things. Once the realities of the pandemic hit, many technologies quickly emerged as must have solutions to help prepare for and manage the “new norm”. Take the sharp rise in virtual visits, secure, remote access, remote patient monitoring, digital check-in, and payment solutions. We saw a marked increase in demand for all these, not only across the entire healthcare landscape, but in the MicroMD client base as well.

We worked with many clients that were grappling with how to quickly make efficient and valuable use of new technologies to deal with the unexpected pandemic changes. In under 2 months, we worked with teams to implement video visits for over 500 providers across a host of specialties and for multiple use cases. We worked with providers who were diagnosed COVID positive who wanted to continue seeing patients. Behavioral health organizations connected via video to patients who were disconnected from critical services. And Wheeling Health Right implemented telemedicine through remote diagnostics to conduct home visits. While we’re seeing video visit usage slow a bit now that practices are reopening, many practices have already implemented plans for how to balance both in-person and virtual visits in their practices long-term. More practices are grasping the reality that thoughtful planning for how to provide the right care, in the right setting, at the right time is more important than ever.

Phase 2 – Practices are reopening. What’s next?

Now that the world is returning to some sort of “normalcy”, practices are opening doors to physical visits and expanding services to provide care for conditions that may have been put on the back burner. Practices are grappling with what to do next. Somewhere in-between the strict changes put in place when the pandemic hit, where we are today with the easing of restrictions, and being prepared for COVID resurgence or the next highly communicable healthcare crisis lies the need to plan for new ways to work safer, more efficient, fiscally responsible, and patient-centric. Practices face a number of new potential realities to plan for, including:

• Preparing for strict, unanticipated changes that come quickly at the onset (or height) of a pandemic
• Transitioning back to a more normal way of work with some critical changes left in place
• Being prepared to shift back to stricter protocols at the drop of a hat
• Continuing to provide care and procedures for non-pandemic related conditions
• Increasing competition for patients desiring safety and convenience

Now we’re shifting our focus to help you identify new opportunities for solutions to further improve staff and patient safety and convenience. We’re here to help you plan for how to integrate those new tools into your long-term care and backup plan strategies. If there is something you are curious about please reach out.

Phase 3 – Now’s the time to thrive in the “new norm”.

We took it to heart that we had a great opportunity to live up to our promise of “getting providers back to the business of healing” during this challenging time. Not only did we focus on ensuring that you had access to software, support, and services, but we helped clients navigate the implementation of new technologies. While practices had to make many hard decisions and make changes across every facet of their operations, technology clearly helped some meet the unexpected challenges. I urge you to continue imagining what your practice of the future should and could look like. Consider what technologies can help you thrive in the “new norm”. What changes can help you improve staff and patient safety? Conserve PPE? Reduce wait times and contact? Triage patients? Remotely monitor and engage patients? Capture revenue? Enable remote work? Improve efficiencies? Offer patients more convenience?

• What can be done from home vs. in the office: Video visits, billing functions, etc.
• Secure remote access to your practice systems: Setup remote access to your in-office servers or through 3rd party data hosting
• Minimize waiting room times: Digital intake and mobile check-in
• Patient convenience options: Virtual visits and things that can be done remotely prior to a visit like online forms and check-in notifications
• Digital statements / online payments: Patient convenience and staff won’t need physical supply of printers, toner, paper, envelopes, and postage
• Remote patient monitoring: Take home devices and video connectivity that patients can use to monitor and share their health information without a physical office visit
• Home care options: Mobile kits that can be used by nursing staff at remote locations to connect to a provider

Let us know what you’re trying to figure out. We have some ideas.

Visit our Marketplace today to learn more about solutions that enable your practice to operate more efficiently in the “new norm.”