Most senior patients have accepted telehealth. According to surveys, telemedicine was enthusiastically adopted by more than 60% of Medicare-eligible seniors during the pandemic, and senior use of telehealth services rose by 300% during the pandemic. Senior patients have already benefited from telehealth in a number of ways, and 28% of them use wearables to track their health. 43% of people utilized technology to help them maintain appropriate social distancing.
Other studies indicate that not all elderly patients have embraced these new services; only 39% of baby boomers have ever utilized telehealth, and only 22% have consulted a provider through video. In all situations, 71% of boomers still strongly prefer visiting the doctor’s office, with Gen X coming in second with 55%.
Your clinic should be working to increase billing practice and improve the number of telehealth visits it receives as a contemporary provider. In order to build stronger bonds and relationships with your patients and keep them coming back, you need to be able to visit them more frequently. This will increase revenue creation and improve patient health outcomes. You should consider it as a hint that the majority of seniors simply require a little assistance to be just as interested and more involved in managing their health if certain seniors can react positively to digital healthcare.
For three tips on using telemedicine to engage older patients, continue reading.
Patience
Seniors learn new technology more slowly than most people, which is the first thing to know about them. Even if seniors of today will be more adept at this than those of a decade or two ago, it may take them some time before they feel completely at ease using their computers, tablets, or smartphones to their full potential. Not to mention all of the programs they will need to utilize, many of which are not very easy to learn because they were made with the assumption that the majority of users would already be familiar with applications that are comparable.
But not just patients are affected by these problems. On the provider’s end, they lose time, and lost time equals lost money. It is advisable to start out being patient just for this reason. Give your patients the support and direction they require as they begin to master the new technology, and both parties will profit in the long term. Using video tutorials is a good place to start. So that patients can complete the process with video instruction nearby, you can make these available on your website or send them to patients via text or email. Do dry runs to walk patients through the procedure for those who are already in the office and are thinking of using telemedicine for future visits.
Always keep in mind that a productive telehealth visit benefits both parties.
Options
The COVID-19 pandemic was the impetus for increased healthcare digitization since it required every company to change in some manner in order to survive and provide customers with the convenience of contactless means of doing business. But it makes sense that some patients would wish to resume their pre-epidemic routines as the pandemic continues to subside.
This means that medical practitioners should keep providing patients with telehealth services only when necessary or suitable. Even though many senior patients would prefer to visit their doctor’s office again, telemedicine will continue to be popular with many. Practices must continue offering telehealth visits so that patients can continue seeing their clinicians from their homes, offices, or other locations.
Giving patients the freedom to choose the kind of visit that suits them best will improve the quality of the patient experience.
Communication Often
Not all healthcare is a sequential procedure. The majority of patients’ involvement in healthcare typically only extends to one scheduled and attended a visit to the doctor. Because of this, you won’t have many chances to offer telehealth to your patients.
By educating patients about the benefits, your clinic can increase the uptake of telehealth. The easiest approach to proceed with this is to spend money on a HIPAA-compliant healthcare communication platform because patients aren’t always at the office. As a result, you will be able to interact with patients more frequently and directly, giving you more opportunities to explain telehealth to them and demonstrate its benefits.
You may easily transmit encrypted communications and have video calls for telehealth appointments using such a platform. To make the procedure easier for patients.
