This week I have been talking with our clients across the country to learn more about what practices are seeing and providers are experiencing on the ground in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread here in the U.S.
Last month, we compiled a list of simple ways you can use the Vital Interaction platform to communicate with your patients — both to stay top of mind for patients who have canceled or missed appointments due to COVID-19 or to continue to monitor patients who need ongoing care. That list of recommendations can be found here.
In addition, we shared insight from Mark Micheletti, the CEO of Berkeley Eye Center of Houston, on how his team is preparing now to minimize the long-term financial impact of COVID-19 on his practice, by streamlining operations, updating vendor contracts, and implementing enhanced telemedicine capabilities, to name a few. You can read more about these short and long-term strategies, and find additional practice resources, including information for small business owners related to the CARES Act, here.
As we continue into month two of widespread impacts across the U.S. related to COVID-19, we are seeing across the board from our clients that non-emergency patient visits to many of our customers’ offices are down more than 50%. To help providers respond to the decrease in office visits and reduced practice revenues, we’ve implemented free access to two of our product features that are helping providers and practices communicate with their patients — including provider-patient chat and bulk message sending capabilities — for free for 90-days.
At Vital Interaction we strive to save providers and staff as much valuable time as possible so they can focus on their patients, ultimately improving patient care. As we all know, many providers’ ability to attend to patients is being challenged daily by the spread of COVID-19 across the US and the advice from healthcare and government leaders for Americans to stay at home to reduce community spread of the virus. Because creating and implementing innovative healthcare technologies is what we do best, we’re focused on getting our solutions into the hands of practice leaders who are facing severe disruptions in operations and revenues. We are all in this together and it’s essential that we work together to share best practices and deliver innovative solutions to strengthen the future of the healthcare industry nationwide.
Some of the needs our clients have shared with us over the past week that our current patient communication tools, and now free services for the next 90 days, can help with include:
- I need to communicate with my patients how Telehealth works.
- I need to communicate with my patients on how we are changing our operations in response to COVID-19.
- Most of us are working from home and I need a number our patients can text and/or a way to let patients get in touch with us.
- I need a flexible way to organize and handle incoming patient requests.
- I need a way to let patients check-in from the parking lot prior to their visit.
- I need a way to send links to documentation or other information required prior to or after a telehealth visit.
For new clients looking to add Vital Interaction tools to your practice to help enhance patient care and automate and improve patient communication during this complex time, we are committed to having you up and running on our platform and sending patient messages within a week or less. To begin service, contact support@vitalinteraction.com or call (512) 487-7625.
For those of you who have been with us for a while, we are committed to continuing to provide new ways to enhance patient care and improve outcomes. Right now, that means protecting your team members and in the long-term, your practice. In the short term, that may mean communicating changing operations to your patients, implementing telehealth solutions and rescheduling patient appointments quickly and efficiently, offsite. We ask you to continue to share with us what we can do to help, what tools and capabilities you’d like to see implemented and how we can work together to strengthen your practice and continue to improve patient care now and in the future.