Why remote working should be a healthcare industry best practice

Flu season seems to be always around the corner, and with this year’s pandemic, remote working has finally received the recognition that it has been striving towards for the last five years. Digital transformation was suddenly spurred into action not by the chiefs of technology of the business world, but by a little invisible contagious virus, hell bent on ending the world. While we awaited the decimation of our invisible foe, remote working stepped in to keep our world ticking over, even if it was from a distance.

For healthcare, the pandemic response took the industry on a very different route. While businesses furloughed staff, healthcare practices across the country answered the call to arms on the front line, putting their lives at risk every shift, to care for those infected and affected. As the virus’ pace slowed, doctors were able to very slowly resume partly normal duties, seeing patients whose appointments had been cancelled due to the pandemic lockdowns. But the enemy is still out there, so precaution must be taken where possible.

Video chat allows you to have appointments with patients who do not require a physical examination, greatly reducing the spread of the virus and allowing patients to speak with doctors as needed. Patients are more likely to attend remote follow up appointments, greatly improving your practice’s patient follow up and appointment attendance rates. Doctors will develop more comprehensive patient notes, providing considerable accuracy for future patient care.

It’s also a massive bonus to those patients who have difficulties with mobility, or in lower income situations, allowing them to attend appointments that do not require a physical assessment from the comfort of their homes. Not only does this reduce the strain on the NHS patient transport system, it also supports the millions of people who might be unable to leave work, or are financially incapable, to attend an appointment.

Doctors will also save a lot of time by attending remote appointments, especially those who have rotations at different locations. Video chat will enable them to have virtual appointments with as many patients, regardless of their location, so that they can make in-person appointments on a specific clinic day, rather than only be able to meet patients on days when they may be in the practice.

Live chat box for website is a great way of making your entire practice much more productive. Staff members will be able to quickly chat with patients to make or cancel appointments or give advice. By using AI chatbots to automate responses, Artie and Coni could greet incoming website visitors, while disseminating the latest coronavirus news, taking that responsibility off of your internal team. Using AI chatbots with your chat box for website will ensure that there is always someone online to speak with patients, no matter what day or time it is.

With Click4Assistance, your entire team can work remotely, right from the customisable dashboard. Imagine, live chat, video chat, chat and form bots, social media direct messages, Click2Call and even your patient CRM integrated, all in one place and accessible from any laptop or computer with a Chrome browser, yet as secure as a payment page so your live conversations are safe. Click4Assistance is registered with the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit and classified as ‘expectations exceeded’ for security protocols, and is completely GDPR compliant with no transatlantic data transfers, so your practice is completely secure in terms of data protection, privacy and security.

Click4Assistance has been successfully supporting healthcare practices like yours for over 15 years. If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to digitally transform your health practice, give us a call on 0845 123 5871 or send an email to theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our experts will be with you right away. Not ready to reach out yet? Discover how it works, try a demo, or better yet, try Click4Assistance completely free for 21 days.