In home health and hospice care, clinician capacity and cost-effectiveness have become more important each year. As healthcare providers continue to grapple with increasing demand and limited resources, finding innovative solutions is key to delivering high-quality care without escalating costs.
Today, virtual visits and patient engagement strategies can revolutionize how care is delivered. By leveraging technology, clinicians can significantly boost their capacity and engage with patients more deeply in less time. This remarkable improvement not only enhances patient access to care but also ensures that clinicians can manage their caseloads more effectively, providing timely and comprehensive support to those in need.
Understanding Virtual Visits in Home Healthcare
Telemedicine ”is the practice of caring for patients over distance” (NLM). Virtual visits offer a convenient and immediate way for patients to digitally connect with their healthcare providers, allowing them to conduct virtual appointments from any location with internet access.
Patients can interact with clinicians in real-time via secure video, discussing their concerns, receiving advice, and even showing physical symptoms for a more accurate diagnosis. This eliminates the risk of transmitting disease and accessibility issues due to travel and reduces wait times. Virtual visits also increase accessibility and personalized care experiences, as providers can tailor their consultations to individual patient needs preferences, and conditions.
As healthcare providers recognize the benefits of remote consultations, integrating virtual visits with patient engagement programs and remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems has become groundbreaking. Together, they facilitate timely interventions, monitoring, and follow-ups that improve resource allocation efficiency for patients, providers, and the healthcare system as a whole (HHS).
Increasing Clinician Capacity with Virtual Visits
Virtual visits optimize clinician schedules to increase their capacity by minimizing the time spent on travel and maximizing the time available for patient care. When conducting consultations remotely, clinicians can seamlessly transition from one appointment to the next without using valuable time for commuting or check-in visits where the patient is fine and doesn’t need in-person care. This reduction in travel time allows more patients to be seen, in some cases expanding clinician capacity up to 250% without sacrificing quality.
“We saw an increase in clinician capacity, allowing us to do more with less,” says Shelley Baker, VP of Care Management. “Completing visits virtually, when appropriate, has freed up our clinicians to better manage their schedules so they can be with patients who need hands-on care.” —Enhabit Home Health and Hospice, CareXM Partner.
Benefits of Virtual Visits For Patient Engagement
By facilitating regular and convenient communication between clinicians and patients, virtual visits encourage patients to take more of an active role in managing their health. This is especially helpful for home health and hospice patients or individuals who live in rural or hard-to-access areas. Virtual visits bridge these gaps, providing consistent and reliable access to healthcare services to those facing barriers to timely medical care.
Alongside virtual visits, RPM monitors a patient’s health remotely and transmits results to care providers, collecting real-time health data on vital signs, symptoms, and other metrics without needing in-person visits. Actionable data and timely identification of abnormalities allow healthcare providers to quickly intervene with patients through remote consultations or medication adjustments, preventing complications and improving outcomes (BJM).
Together, these hospice and home health applications focus on proactive patient engagement, helping patients personally engage better with their healthcare. Patients virtually interact with automated education prompts, daily check-ins, and vital tracking–ultimately reducing provider costs and improving outcomes for all. As healthcare providers use virtual visits and RPM technology, they can ensure that patients remain engaged and informed, leading to better health outcomes and a more efficient healthcare system.
Reducing Staff Burnout and Increasing Efficiency
As healthcare goes virtual, “more healthcare providers are offering to see patients by computer or smartphone, [finding] improved technology has made telemedicine easier…” (JohnHopkins). Virtual visits significantly reduce transit time and alleviate the burden on clinicians, enabling them to allocate more time to patient care rather than traveling between appointments. For staff, reducing travel enhances efficiency and lessens the risk of burnout from constant activity.
Telehealth efficiency is pivotal in increasing clinician capacity by streamlining processes and minimizing administrative tasks through digital documentation and automated scheduling. CareXM’s Ellen Kuebrich notes,
“Our telehealth platform was built by home health and hospice nurses for home health and hospice nurses. We live and breathe telehealth every day – whether in fast, responsive triage or for proactive patient engagement programs.”
By leveraging such technology, clinicians can provide more responsive and comprehensive care, ultimately improving their well-being and job satisfaction.
Clinical Expertise Through Virtual Visits
Using vendors without a clinical mindset, the benefits of virtual visits, remote patient monitoring (RPM), or patient engagement programs are just technology add-ons keeping effective utilization out of reach. Providers will continue to face burnout, turnover, and high readmission rates, which leaves patients less satisfied with their care. For centralized engagement, both patients and providers experience a smoother transition–avoiding common pitfalls that come from quickly adding new technology to existing systems or clinical workflows.
With CareXM’s approach to virtual telehealth strategies, nurses can easily harness the capabilities of online platforms for efficient, cost-effective, and timely care delivery. Through virtual visits, clinicians can engage with patients in the comfort of their homes, breaking down barriers that may hinder regular in-person interactions. Thanks to CareXM’s technology, clinicians can go a step further with patients, encouraging them to make positive steps in their healthcare journey. Shelly Baker, VP of Care Management at Enhabit Home Health and Hospice, highlights the positive feedback from clinicians after partnering with CareXM for Clinical Expertise:
“In the branches that currently have access to this resource, we have received positive feedback from the clinicians. They have expressed their appreciation of the centralized support and the ability to have an additional resource in their toolbox to treat patients and help deliver high-quality, compassionate care.”
Boost Your Clinician Capacity with CareXM’s Virtual Telehealth
Clinical capacity, patient engagement, and efficiency are critical to delivering high-quality care in home health and hospice care. Today, virtual visits continue to transform these services, driving efficiency and ensuring cost-effective service delivery.
At CareXM, we aim to elevate the experience for patients, caregivers, and your entire healthcare team. As a leader in home health triage services, we’ve become an invaluable partner for agencies looking to grow and improve their services. With our innovative technology, including virtual visits, remote patient monitoring, and patient engagement programs, agencies like Enhabit Home Health and Hospice have successfully managed increased patient loads, reduced after-hours call volume, and enhanced staff satisfaction. Whether you need support with triage staffing or patient engagement solutions, CareXM will transform your patient care approach. Let’s elevate the care experience together.