Virtual Clinics - integrated video and phone appointments
Integrate virtual appointments with hospital systems
Virtual Clinics connects clinicians and patients virtually, removing the requirement for patients to attend hospital for their clinic appointment / consultation.
Virtual Clinics is the future-proof virtual consultation solution designed to fully integrate into hospital PAS / EPR systems, and many leading video and softphone solutions already deployed across the NHS, realising significant operational and clinical benefits.
The solution ensures virtual appointments and does not operate in silo (as is often the case). Intouch with Health’s award-winning integration technology joins patient and appointment information together in the single dashboard, which contains the live data all staff can view and access securely. From this dashboard, staff can initiate the video or phone appointments and manage virtual patient pathways in an integrated manner.
Enhance existing virtual appointment pathways and processes
Using Virtual Clinics, clinicians can manage video and phone consultations as efficiently and comprehensively as face-to-face appointments.
By clicking the video or phone icon on the patient’s appointment line, Virtual Clinics will automatically open the video / softphone solution and connect the clinician with the patient dial the patient’s number. Video patients will be waiting in a virtual waiting room for the clinician. Phone patients will be called automatically using the phone number in the system.
Once the appointment is finished, the clinician can record that the consultation has ended and any follow-up notes / actions, including follow-up appointments.
Requiring minimal training and set-up time, Virtual Clinics offers an intuitive interface to new users and familiarity for existing users of the Intouch Platform.
Manage all appointment types on one dashboard
When deployed alongside Intouch with Health's Flow Manager solution, all appointment types (face-to-face, video and phone) can be managed together, on one single dashboard.
Contact the team to find out more about Virtual Clinics.
Key features:
- Integration between EPR / PAS and the video / softphone solution already deployed at the hospital
- Patient authentication is achieved via an automated, integrated check-in process (depending on the video provider)
- The authenticated check-in process protects the service from unauthorised access (depending on the video provider)
- The check-in process flows patients into the appropriate virtual waiting room, signalling to the clinician they are ready for the appointment (depending on the video provider)
- Virtual Clinics is easily scalable - designed for both rapid deployment and as a long-term care management solution
- Rapid, remote deployment is available (providing the hospital's technical infrastructure meets the minimum requirements)
- Intuitive design – minimal training required (mirroring the interfaces patients and clinicians already use if the Intouch Platform is deployed in the hospital)
Hospital benefits:
- Manage all patients (virtual and physical) in one integrated platform
- Consolidate processes - reducing data duplication, saving time and releasing cost savings
- Reduces staff and clinic room requirements – no requirement for clinicians to travel to different sites for different clinics
- Clinicians avoid using multiple applications as a result of full integration
- Reduces strain on the physical hospital environment
Patient benefits:
- Provides patients with an improved experience and greater convenience over their appointments
- Reduces requirement for patients to attend hospital to communicate with clinicians
- Reduces travel costs and time as patients can ‘attend’ their appointment from anywhere
- Patients with long-term care support requirements / mobility issues / limited transportation etc. especially benefit from improved communication lines with clinicians
What makes Virtual Clinics different?
Virtual Clinics is unlike other solutions as it does not provide a video or phone connection between the hospital and patient. Virtual Clinics integrates the processes and solutions already deployed, providing greater operational and clinical benefits by ensuring virtual consultations do not take place in a siloed fashion.
Virtual Clinics from Intouch with Health is future proof and easily scalable for long-term care management. Using the latest technology, future upgrades are easily synced through the Intouch Platform framework and the solution is designed to cope with increased demand as more patients adopt virtual consultations as their preference for communication with clinicians.
Reduce the cost of over-running clinics
Research from the Royal College of Physicians suggests 57% of outpatient clinics finish late every clinic or at least once a week. Overrun clinics continue to contribute heavily to mounting operating costs and increasing waiting times across the whole NHS. By using Virtual Clinics to reduce the volume of face-to-face appointments and overrun clinics, hospitals can realise significant savings.
Virtual Clinics also supports the NHS Long Term Plan commitment to reduce face-to-face outpatient appointments by up to a third over the next five years, potentially saving the NHS more than £1 billion a year.
Important
If you are a patient or require medical help, please contact your GP or 111.
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