Tips to Ease Telehealth Wait Time Concerns

Wait times have long been a common concern for patients at office-based medical appointments. When telehealth skyrocketed in popularity last year, it became clear that wait times are even more of a frustration for patients during virtual visits.
The numbers show wait times are the biggest pain point for patients who use telehealth. While the national composite mean for wait times during in-person visits in 2020 was 4.79, it was only 4.51 for virtual visits. Although virtual visits offer convenience and can be done from the comfort of the patient’s own home, wait times cannot be ignored.
The American Medical Association says health professionals are seeing 50-175 times the number of patients through telehealth as they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because this growth was sudden and unexpected, healthcare providers and organizations are having to learn and adjust processes as they go. Delays are inevitable, but for the patient, this can be exceptionally stressful; after all, during a virtual visit there is no one nearby who can keep them informed of their wait.
In this case, communicating with your patients up front and providing clear instructions for virtual visits is the best possible way to ease wait time frustrations. Since many patients are new to telehealth, sending an email with detailed instructions or providing a link to the information on your website prior to the scheduled visit is ideal.

Required Equipment

Inform the patient of the equipment or devices (including system requirements) that can be used for their visit.

Logging In

An analysis of patient comments on our Telehealth Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire showed nearly 27% of patients had trouble logging in or connecting to their telehealth visit.
Provide instructions on where and how the patient will log into their visit. If a username and password are required, ensure the patient understands how to set up an account if they don’t already have one. Encourage your patients to log on for their visit 10-15 minutes early in the event they have connectivity issues.
Email Links
If your practice emails a link to the patient to join the visit, tell the patient how long prior to their appointment time they can expect to receive the link. When sending links, always double-check the patient’s email address at the time of scheduling.
Direct Phone Calls
If the provider will call the patient directly, double-check the patient’s phone number at the time of scheduling. As with email, notify the patient of the approximate time their provider will be calling. When possible, let the patient know what number the provider will be calling from.
Troubleshooting
Provide the patient with troubleshooting FAQs for common connection issues.

Delays

While it may not be feasible to provide updates to the patient during their wait, it’s a good idea to set an expectation for the amount of time the patient may have to wait after their appointment start time. Provide information on who they should contact in the event their wait lasts longer than a specified amount of time, such as 15 minutes.
By proactively communicating to all patients about common setbacks and causes for delays, the efficiency of your virtual visits may increase and positively impact wait times.

Learn More

SurveyVitals offers a Telehealth Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire to gather feedback from your patients on their virtual visit experiences with your practice. Learn more here or sign up for a demo.

February 17th, 2021 Categories: Best Practices, COVID-19, featured, Outpatient Practice, Patient Experience, Telehealth

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

New Features: Telehealth Survey and Updated Survey Interface

The SurveyVitals solution is continuously evolving to fit our users’ unique needs–healthcare organizations of all sizes and specialties. Improvements and new developments to the online reporting patient experience platform come as a result of direct input and asks from clients.

Our newly released telehealth survey solution makes it easy for practices providing both in-person visits and audio/visual offerings to understand and measure what might feel like a new experience. Additionally, the patient survey interface has been optimized to improve user experience. To learn more about these releases, read below or contact your SurveyVitals account manager.

Interested in learning more about SurveyVitals? Request more information here.

Telehealth Survey

Due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, more healthcare organizations are offering virtual visits than ever before to reduce the risk of exposure to patients and staff. To help our clients adapt, we developed the Telehealth Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (TPSQ).

The telehealth survey features 12 questions about the patient experience with virtual visits within your healthcare organization. These questions cover scheduling the visit, logging on, provider communication and interactions, and willingness to recommend.

The telehealth survey easily adapts to your workflow. Organizations offering both in-person and telehealth visits can upload a single patient list for both visit types, so no additional work is needed after survey setup is complete.

Updated Survey Interface

Our new digital survey interface was designed to improve the user experience for patients while taking the survey. The update ensures a consistent experience and furthers patient accessibility. Over 90% of SurveyVitals digital surveys are completed on mobile devices.

Telehealth Survey New Interface

If you are interested in enabling the telehealth survey for your organization or have questions about the updated survey interface, reach out to your SurveyVitals Account Manager or contact us using the blue chat icon at the bottom of the screen.

June 16th, 2020 Categories: COVID-19, featured, Outpatient Practice, Patient Experience

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Recent Posts

Trend: Patients seeking resources on scheduling COVID-19 vaccine in satisfaction surveys
March 17, 2021

An analysis of patient comments in the first two months of 2021 shows a trend in patients seeking information on how to schedule a COVID vaccine. Compared to the last two months of 2020, there has been a 301% increase in the mention of vaccines in free text patient comments. A limited vaccine supply has […]

Read More
MIPS Extreme & Uncontrollable Circumstances Application Extended
March 5, 2021

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has reopened the extreme and uncontrollable circumstances exception application for the 2020 performance year due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. Clinicians, groups, and virtual groups have until March 31, 2021 to submit an application requesting MIPS performance category reweighting. Data for the 2020 performance year that […]

Read More
respond to online reviews
Best Practice: Responding to Online Reviews
March 3, 2021

Over 80% of patients turn to Google when looking for a new healthcare provider. SurveyVitals’ online reputation tools have helped boost client Google reviews by 281%. While increasing your number of online reviews is essential for attracting new patients, it’s equally important to respond to these reviews appropriately. Patients are certainly reading online reviews, but […]

Read More
Tips to Ease Telehealth Wait Time Concerns
February 17, 2021

Wait times have long been a common concern for patients at office-based medical appointments. When telehealth skyrocketed in popularity last year, it became clear that wait times are even more of a frustration for patients during virtual visits. The numbers show wait times are the biggest pain point for patients who use telehealth. While the […]

Read More