{"id":38711,"date":"2017-03-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newrcblog.wpengine.com\/ringcentral-glip-meets-the-medical-practice\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T08:46:12","slug":"ringcentral-video-meets-the-medical-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/us\/en\/blog\/ringcentral-video-meets-the-medical-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"RingCentral Video Meets the Medical Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A medical practice is a small business that must function efficiently to deliver care to patients with a minimum of wasted time and resources. Doctors and nurses take their medical mission seriously, but they also feel the pressure of insurance companies and regulators telling them how to do their jobs, not to mention the ever-present pressure of the clock limiting how many appointments they can fit into a day.<\/p>\n

While applications for managing medical records and health insurance claims are very important to the smooth functioning of a practice, care team and business office employees also need to address many issues for which there is no neat checkbox on any database form.<\/p>\n

RingCentral Video allows healthcare professionals to be in constant communication, dealing with the unexpected and solving problems. RingCentral MVP, the suite of communication and collaboration apps that includes RingCentral Video along with business phone service<\/a>, functions as a secure conduit for communications as defined by HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. That status now also applies to RingCentral Video when purchased as part of RingCentral MVP.<\/p>\n

With the RingCentral mobile app, doctors who check in with their office on their phone or tablet can send and receive messages containing protected health information without risking violating the patient data privacy provisions of HIPAA \u2014 as they would using regular text messaging<\/a> or email.<\/p>\n

A care team can also share messages that include file attachments or images \u2014 with RingCentral\u2019s image annotation, as a powerful way of commenting on specific parts of those images. Action items can be assigned as tasks for greater accountability. And everyone on the care team can stay up to date on what everyone else is doing.<\/p>\n

Many physician practices have already learned to love RingCentral MVP because of its flexibility. For example, a doctor returning a patient\u2019s call from home can use the RingCentral app<\/a> to place that call from a business phone line<\/a> rather than the number for his personal smartphone. When activated as part of MVP, the RingCentral App functions as an interactive phone directory for one-click dialing of any coworker and quick setup of conference calls<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consider the vignettes that follow case studies from the future \u2014 our thoughts about how practices will put the RingCentral app to work to solve common problems.<\/p>\n

1) Collaboration Between Physicians in a\u00a0Practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

A dermatology group creates a team where membership is limited to three physicians, Doctors Joseph Kaminsky, William Stern, and Arun Gupta and a nurse practitioner, Susan Landry. This space is specifically for discussion of clinical issues. Dr. Kaminsky uses his smartphone to securely upload a photo of a patient\u2019s unusual skin rash for which he does not yet have a diagnosis. He explains why he is hesitating to recommend a treatment plan and is unsure which of several diseases could be causing the symptoms.<\/p>\n

Dr. Stern is away at a conference but views the message in the RingCentral app on his phone. Back in his hotel room later, he takes a second look at the image on his laptop and uses RingCentral\u2019s image annotation to attach notes to specific features of the photo. He remembers reading a journal article about a newly documented type of infection that might be relevant. He finds that article online and shares it with his colleagues. The RingCentral App generates a link preview that allows them to immediately understand the gist of the article, even before reading the full text.<\/p>\n

Dr. Gupta suggests an over-the-counter treatment that the patient might try first before being a prescribed antibiotics. The three doctors discuss the case further over the course of the afternoon via text chat and decide they need to talk live. During a break in the event he is attending, Dr. Stern finds a quiet place where he can join a conference call<\/a> with his colleagues, launched from within the RingCentral smartphone app.<\/p>\n

The doctors ultimately decide antibiotic treatment can\u2019t wait, although other non-prescription remedies should be tried in parallel.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kaminisky @mentions nurse practitioner Susan Landry in a post summarizing their conclusions. She records the essential details in the practice\u2019s electronic medical records (EMR) system and calls the patient to discuss the treatment plan. While she is on the phone, she is able to message Dr. Kaminsky through RingCentral Video to get an immediate answer to a patient question she did not anticipate.<\/p>\n

At the patient\u2019s next office visit, the rash is gone.<\/p>\n

Before RingCentral, Dr. Stern probably would not have been able to consult on this case at all. Certainly they could have set up a conference call by other means, but for him to participate would have been almost pointless if the care team lacked an easy but secure way of sharing a medical image. By sharing their thoughts in a running conversation that included links to relevant information, the doctors did most of their brainstorming up front and used their time on a conference call more efficiently to finalize their decisions.<\/p>\n

A few other things this practice collaborates on through the RingCentral App:<\/p>\n