Training is at the heart of any good Virtual Care program. Everyone in the industry is learning new ways of doing things while maintaining focus on the health and satisfaction of patients. So it’s not an overstatement to say that good training with all of these new capabilities can mean the difference between success and failure in the healthcare business.
At eVisit we have an entire team dedicated to customer education and training in our Customer Success team. This team works tirelessly to keep clinical teams up-to-speed with world-class Virtual Care courses and educational content.
Here are the five tips for best practices in Virtual Care training to ensure customer success.
Be Hands-On
No one likes looking like they don’t know what they’re doing, especially in healthcare where stakes are high.
First and foremost, it’s important to increase the level of comfort people have with the technology. Knowing that change is hard to embrace, we stress the need to allow people to get familiar with their new Virtual Care tools.
In our experiences training adults to use new software over the years, we are consistently reminded that no matter what your level of expertise in your job and regardless of your educational background, learning new software is uncomfortable for most.
Providing hands-on training in a low-stakes environment is critical to the success of Virtual Care. Staff need to perform the tasks they’ll be doing in their day-to-day work. For example, those who are involved in scheduling patient visits need hands-on time to practice scheduling, rescheduling, and canceling visits with the online tools. This gives them a chance to work on their skills with the training facilitator right by their side to guide them and answer questions as they arise.
Prepare Providers
According to eVisit’s training team, equipping providers with the knowledge and resources they need to master the use of their Virtual Care tools is imperative for smooth patient interactions.
Imagine how quickly a provider-patient relationship could sour if the provider is visibly struggling to use the tools during a visit. With this in mind, the eVisit platform was born for exactly this -- ease of use was paramount from inception to market delivery and ongoing platform updates. The eVisit system delivers ease-of-use as a primary feature for all ages, and we are always finding ways to keep things user-friendly. As a result, the eVisit platform gets high ratings -- 4.8 out of five stars!
Providers should practice managing virtual waiting rooms and sending prescriptions from their Virtual Care platform. They also need to train to make the most of virtual visits, by communicating clearly and asking questions that move the visit along. This is important given that self-reporting from patients is the primary source of information providers use in virtual visits.
Put Yourself in the Patient’s Shoes
eVisit’s training sessions offer an overview of the patient experience so providers and their support staff can get a first-hand look at what the patient is seeing and doing during each stage of the virtual visit. This 360° view can help in a range of different ways.
First, it can help to assuage any concerns around the virtual visit experience and whether it will be easy enough for their patients. This knowledge also enables medical staff to answer patient questions about virtual visits and, more importantly, know when it is appropriate to schedule this type of care modality. Finally, viewing the Virtual Care experience from multiple angles provides greater insight into how a health system’s internal processes might need to be adjusted to support the integration of Virtual Care into daily routines.
Gather Data
Consistent monitoring and evaluation of a Virtual Care program is critical to building proficiency and that means health care organizations must collect Virtual Care performance data.
eVisit has sophisticated data and reporting features and the platform delivers lots of data. There are several common metrics that eVisit customers can access. These include user satisfaction ratings, the number of Virtual Care visits being performed within a given timeframe, revenue generated from virtual visits, the number of cancelled visits, “super-users” among the providers, and more. Data is crucial to drive continuous improvement in Virtual Care programs.
Ongoing Training
At eVisit we do not view training as one-and-done! We see it as a sustained effort that focuses on delivering the right training content at the right time. Our product roadmap is driven by customer needs and our Vision. Because our product roadmap delivers new features and functionality often, continuous training is also important.
One of the ways eVisit is working to make training an ongoing endeavor is by incorporating in-product education features. This enables the platform to deliver important tips, guides, and answers to questions directly within the eVisit Virtual Care platform and available when users need it. This also means a provider can work uninterrupted and focus on what matters most: patient care. In-platform education is especially beneficial in large healthcare organizations where not every staff member is available to join face-to-face training.
It’s imperative that we provide these types of easy-access resources to ensure that training is happening on a continuous basis and doesn’t depend on the efforts of a single team or specific training
Get in touch with us to learn more about Virtual Care tools, services and training by requesting a consult at the button below.
About the Author
Justin Miller is Vice President of Customer Success at the leading Virtual Care platform, eVisit. He is leading his expanding team of Virtual Care Consultants to drive a leading customer success record and with the firm’s Virtual Care Maturity Model, assessing and addressing gaps to accelerate customers’ Virtual Care programs forward.