{"id":45818,"date":"2020-12-15T19:00:43","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T03:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"\/us\/en\/blog\/?p=45818"},"modified":"2024-08-15T07:22:42","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T14:22:42","slug":"is-your-telehealth-solution-futureproof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/us\/en\/blog\/is-your-telehealth-solution-futureproof\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your telehealth solution futureproof?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of a global public healthcare crisis, patients and healthcare providers turned to telehealth technology, and patients have broadly accepted telehealth. Yet, what happens after the public healthcare crisis comes to an end? Will patients still be satisfied with the experience that today\u2019s telehealth solutions deliver?<\/span><\/p>\n

How can you improve your telehealth experience today, so you can position your healthcare organization for current and future success?<\/span><\/p>\n

(<\/span>RingCentral is currently offering RingCentral Office for free to healthcare providers<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Have you really solved the challenges of telehealth?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Toward the end of August 2020, the KLAS Arch Research Collaborative published a study on how healthcare executives were dealing with the\u00a0<\/span>challenges of the public healthcare crisis<\/span><\/a>. One of the questions researchers asked the 19 executives they surveyed was, \u201cHave you solved the challenges of telehealth technology?\u201d Eighty-four percent of respondents said \u201cyes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What does it mean to solve telehealth technology challenges? Second, why are there so many executives who feel confident enough to say their healthcare organizations no longer face these obstacles? Healthcare IT expert\u00a0<\/span>John Lynn<\/span><\/a> expressed surprise and skepticism at the results. He wrote, \u201cImplementation and during a crisis users are much more forgiving than they\u2019re going to be six months from now.\u00a0 And let me assure you that there\u2019s still a lot of telehealth optimization left to go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Telehealth challenges: the perception and the reality<\/b><\/h4>\n

To understand why an overwhelming number of respondents say they\u2019ve solved telehealth technology challenges, let\u2019s examine how KLAS Arch defined these problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked what their biggest challenge was during the tumultuous events of 2020, just under a third of respondents said that it was telehealth. Specifically, the challenge was telehealth capacity or functionality. Eighty-four percent of respondents believed they had solved that issue by putting a telehealth solution in place. The same amount of executives also said they had addressed the challenges of working from home, yet only two-thirds said they had fixed problems with the effectiveness of virtual care.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to the survey results, Lynn wrote, \u201cWe\u2019re at the start of telehealth really becoming mature and telehealth a year from now is going to look starkly different than what most healthcare organizations have implemented today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What does that mean for healthcare organizations? Just having a telehealth solution will be table stakes\u2014what will truly differentiate your organization from your competitors is the patient experience you deliver.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"RingCentral<\/p>\n

Telehealth technology and the patient experience<\/b><\/h2>\n

The patient experience refers to every interaction a patient has with a healthcare organization. There are two things to remember about the patient experience:<\/span><\/p>\n