For some time, seeing a doctor was the only way to get treated. You have to bring yourself physically to the doctor’s clinic or the medical facility. Only then can you get your fair share of medical advice. There was no incentive for medical practitioners to change such a status quo. Not until the pandemic.
Today, health professionals and medical companies are doubling down on medication from a safe distance or telehealth. Many medical practitioners are working remotely now from home. You could say it’s a positive effect to a largely negative circumstance.
The million-dollar question now is how do you make your medical practice suit the work from home set-up? How will you go about it? Know that you need to adjust to this flexibility. By doing so, you get to help a portion of those millions of Americans who can’t get help. Indeed, it’s a timely way to make your Hippocratic Oath a reality right from home.
The Benefits of Working from Home
An obvious benefit for you is you won’t have to put yourself at undue risk of contracting the virus when you WFH or work from home. Right? To date, more than 1 000 healthcare workers – from physicians to orderlies to nurses – have succumbed to the virus. Certainly, it’s one reality you can’t ignore.
Right from the get-go, you should already have administrative tasks done remotely. You can have staff take care of appointment-setting for instance. Or for that matter, you can also include bookkeeping and insurance claims and filing.
Telehealth offers a lot of ways you can get in touch with your patients from home. And factor health services from a safe distance. In a sense, this benefits patients a lot. Not only do they need not travel to see you but also they can have what they need a lot faster. And like you, they’re lowering the risk of getting the virus.
Another distinct advantage is you can help more patients using telehealth. As you work from home, you can remotely look into individual cases at a faster rate than when done in-person. Plus, you won’t have so much overhead compared to working from a clinic.
There are a host of services that can be done remotely better. Contract tracing is one, as well as monitoring those who are recovering from COVID-19.
Making Remote Work Happen
It’s imperative you look into what services can and cannot be done via remote work. Surgeons for one need not see their patients as much.
Additionally, you can explore a hybrid type of remote work. Those tasks that need to be done in-person should be identified while assigning those that can happen without actual face-to-face to remote work.
Another option for you is to build a medical office facility close to home. That way you won’t have to travel far just to give the service needed to be done in-person. You can pool talents with other medical doctors in the area to make your services more comprehensive.
In the era of the pandemic, the need for medical facilities is sky-high. So you won’t have to worry about the market.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can explore a shared office space that can act as your center of operations. You can come by to see patients on particular days while you can have your support group working remotely.
Technology to the Rescue
Explore technology to the hilt to make remote work happen. For one, you should maximize on electronic health record software to keep your patient files in order. Cloud services can also be used to store pertinent data.
You should secure technology used for everyone on your staff. A good start is to require all workers who access patient files to use a VPN or a virtual private network. Additionally, you should require your staffers to use a password in joining online meetings or accessing pertinent records.
In hindsight, you should enforce two-factor authentication for the best results. Take note that there is a slew of tools you can use for free to connect with your team. Making the most of these tools can save you precious dollars.
Workday and Zoom allows you to interact one-on-one or as a team. That should also allow you to hold a meeting of sorts for your patients. Then, there’s Slack to facilitate better communication at work for everyone.
Working from home has its distinct advantages. Exploring it means putting more patients in a better position to come out of the pandemic as healthy as a horse.
