Telehealth
Saving Time and Improving Profitability with Telehealth
Have you ever added up how much time in your day is taken up calling back clients? Is that what keeps you in the office late or interferes with taking a lunch break? Most likely!
NYSVMS / TeleTails Partnernship
The NYSVMS has named TeleTails, a telehealth software platform, as its exclusive provider of virtual care. TeleTails will bring NYSVMS members both education about the benefits and considerations of offering virtual care, as well as provide discounted member pricing for the TeleTails platform.
What is it?
A telehealth client communication platform enables you and your team to communicate more effectively with your clients wherever they are. The TeleTails platform that we endorse is solely for use within the context of a veterinarian-client prior relationship (VCPR) which you have already established with an existing client.
For example, you might want to check on how a patient is doing post-surgery. You could have your staff set up a video consult with a client using their smartphone so they can show you the condition of their pet. The platform can also collect payment for the consultation and generates a record that can be uploaded into your practice management system while archiving all exchanges for peace of mind.
You are likely already offering some form of follow-up and client consultation by phone (or email). Now, via TeleTails, you can charge appropriately for your time and resources. You can maximize in-person visits by supplementing care with digital consultations, reducing the time load on your staff to clean the examination room, front-desk registration etc.
Why TeleTails?
For over a year, the NYSVMS Telehealth Task Force has been looking at a range of telehealth platforms and how they would impact our members. We have chosen to partner with TeleTails due to an alignment in our firms’ commitment to the success and development of local veterinary practices in the digital age.
TeleTails is a virtual pet care platform that extends trusted relationships between veterinarians and pet owners beyond the walls of a practice. The company’s software provides veterinary practices with tools to offer live video consultations, messaging, internal workflow management, archiving, and payment capabilities to securely and easily connect with pet owners digitally.
By partnering with a telehealth provider, the NYSVMS aims to make software choices less confusing for members who want to get the benefits of telehealth without having to do a comparison of all the options. It also meant we could engage that partner in both educating our members, offering discounted member pricing, exceptional service, and evolving a product to meet the needs of our membership.
We chose TeleTails because they are a New York based team with a veterinarian as one of the two founders. Their product is exceptional and specifically built to integrate into a busy hospital team’s workflow, and the pricing is particularly attractive to members with the NYSVMS discounts.
The market for telehealth communications platforms like these has only just started to develop in veterinary medicine. As more veterinarians use telehealth platforms the providers will better understand their needs, and we can help evolve the system to provide even more time-saving and profitability improvements for our member base.
We particularly liked TeleTails interest in working alongside us and our members to ensure that their platform evolves around your needs here in NY.
Saving Time with Telehealth
Have you ever added up how much time in your day is taken up calling back clients? Is that what keeps you in the office late or interferes with taking a lunch break? Most likely!
Video consultations with clients are usually much shorter than phone calls (they average 8 min.) because you can see the pet and don’t need to rely solely on pet owner descriptions. They are also much faster than text-based messages due to the efficiencies of a face-to-face conversation.. These digital exchanges free up your staff, reduce the workload at reception, and increase the number of clients you can see in examination rooms during the day by freeing precious hospital space.
It also means you could spend a little more time at home, adding more flexibility to your schedule.
Improving Profitability with Telehealth
How much time do you spend on the phone with a client each day? What if you could get paid for your time and deliver more value at the same time?
Clients are willing to pay for virtual consultations with you and your team. They may expect a slight discount to an in-person exam (or a premium for after-hours care), but this is appropriate when you consider the time and space savings that result from a digital consultation.
Studies also show that telehealth can improve client retention. There’s a dark side to this though. Make sure you are on the leading edge of veterinarians offering telehealth to their clients because as it becomes more common throughout the industry, research suggests that millennial clients will likely choose a veterinarian who offers some form of telehealth.
Highlights from Webinar: Saving Time with Telehealth
- 55% Reduction in time spent on callbacks with virtual care
- Elimate front-desk bottlenecks
- Virtual recheck and progress exams save time and labor cleaning rooms
- Triage for mobile practices can save unnecessary visits
- Streamline patients care
Highlights from Webinar: Virtual Care for Profitability
- 4.8% Deliver more services without investment or staff (veterinary market growth)
- 66% Millenials who would switch providers if digital care not offered
- $0/hr Responding to “Quick Question” calls, emails, texts
- $378/hr Nine virtual consultations at $42