We are continuing our series on telemedicine success by looking at how to track your progress. Any initiative you implement should be measured, and telemedicine is no different.

Don’t fly by the seat of your pants. This whole process should have started with some clear goal setting. You want to know how you are doing in executing telehealth, virtual care, and remote patient monitoring and the impact it has on your healthcare providers, your patients, and your bottom line, especially during times when most consultations need to be moved to telehealth and virtual visits. There are many possible metrics to track working in digital health services and healthcare delivery. Look at your goals and choose the ones that make sense.

Visits
These metrics help you see what types of visits make sense for your patients and how well they are being adopted.

  • How many visits overall
  • What type of telehealth or virtual visits
  • Growth of telehealth and virtual visits over time
  • Average duration of video and telephone visits

Patient metrics
 To be successful, you need to know how patients are responding to and engaging with telehealth and virtual visits. Also, whether or not the service appeals to current patients as well as potential or new patients.

  • New patients to your facility
  • Returning users of telehealth
  • Wait time to get an appointment
  • Wait time before the appointment
  • Patient visit time
  • Patient satisfaction/experience
  • Patient willingness to recommend
  • Patient retention

Staff metrics
 Staff metrics are a great way of determining if the current solution and workflow are sustainable and promote staff well-being.

  • Staff satisfaction
  • Total hours worked
  • Break times being honored

Provider metrics
 This is just as important as gathering patient experience data. If care providers don’t like it, it won’t be adopted long-term.

  • Clinician satisfaction
  • Clinician work time

Financial metrics
 You should look at the same financial metrics you use for in-person visits, but if nothing else, be sure to look at:

  • Reimbursements by visit type
  • Costs by visit type

Service metrics
 Service metrics will show you how well your healthcare facility is working overall. Poor performance won’t lend itself to long-term success.

  • Deliverability of sessions completed
  • Are texts being received and sent?
  • Are emails being received and sent?
  • “Bounce rate”
  • Service uptime/downtime
  • Service issues/bugs

Also, you should be tracking the same health outcomes and patient health data you already capture for various value-based and other incentivized payment and safety programs. Compare your patient outcomes data from the telehealth visits to those from in-person visits. This would include prescription data, hospital readmissions data, and best practice guideline adherence. You’ll want to work to close any gaps in the quality of patient care and improve your patient engagement if you plan to leverage telehealth and virtual visits for the long term.

Discover 5 other ways your healthcare organization can measure and improve your telehealth services: “5 Gotta-Have-’Em Metrics to Amplify Your Practice’s Success”.