There are a number of ready-made telehealth solutions on the market. Vectera, eVisit, and Doxy.me are some of the most prominent telemedicine solution providers, as they give doctors a quick way of delivering HIPAA-compliant telehealth services.
But in the long run, these are also not optimal solutions. Here’s why:
Price. Telehealth patient communication platforms will charge you for a license or subscription, but be prepared to pay extra for essential features. With Doxy.me, for example, to get a monthly usage report or add multiple participants to a call, you have to choose the most expensive Clinic plan.
Poor customizability and feature sets. With existing platforms, there’s not enough flexibility to quickly adjust your software to fit your existing workflow, and some features you need might be unavailable. For instance, Vectera doesn’t provide e-prescribing. The eVisit feature set is even poorer: the platform doesn’t offer appointment reminders, billing, or even appointment scheduling. Moreover, if you use any SaaS solution, you can’t store data on your own servers, which is sometimes critical for a medical practice.
Unstable support. During emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, a telehealth platform’s support team might be too busy to be reached and there may be nobody to help you if the service goes down. That’s what happened to Doxy.me customers in April 2020 during the spring coronavirus peak. According to reviews on the Doxy.me website, users were struggling with connection quality issues and were unable to get timely help from the support team.
Any ready-made live communication or telehealth solution might aid in providing emergency telehealth services. But while you’re leaning on a temporary crutch to cover your patients’ needs, it’s high time to get down to creating a reliable custom HIPAA-compliant telemedicine application. There are many reasons to believe that telehealth will remain in high demand when the COVID-19 pandemic passes.
Obviously, COVID-19 triggered the use of telehealth services. Doctors, patients, and medical practices tried this digital health technology, and it turned out that health virtual visits can be much more convenient than in-person visits. Moreover, it seems that many things doctors initially thought they could only provide during an in-person visit might be successfully provided online. The positive experience with telehealth services and unease with in-person visits caused by the pandemic are leading to increasing demand for telehealth services from all parties.
