Wondering how you can you help your patients feel more comfortable with telehealth in the run-up to their first appointment? We've put together a video guide and some ideas on how you can use it to prepare your patients for their first Cliniko telehealth call.
Michelle Geslewitz·
When it comes to creating an excellent telehealth experience, transparency can go a long way in helping to earn your patient’s trust and building rapport. We’ve heard from clinicians that some patients are curious about how telehealth in Cliniko works. There’s also the learning curve that comes with using a new system for the first time. If these are things your clients have asked about, we’ve created a new video to help make their first telehealth experience a smooth one.
Our resident videographer Rachel put together this handy telehealth guide for patients that demonstrates exactly how the calls work and what your clients can expect from their first video consultation in Cliniko. In just a few minutes, she walks your clients through each step of the process, including how to join an appointment, use messages, troubleshoot, and end the call.
Jason and Rachel from Cliniko demonstrate Cliniko telehealth
Even if you have been running secure telehealth consultations for weeks now, this video could help build your patient’s confidence and save valuable treatment time.
Here’s how you can get started sharing the video with your patients in the lead up to their appointment!
When patients are initially booking their telehealth appointment, you have the option to include more details about what they can expect.
To add a description for each service you offer, open up your Cliniko account and head to Settings → Appointment types and select the service you’d like to edit.
Within the description field, you can include as much information as you like, including a link to the video telehealth guide:
Once you save your Appointment type settings, your patients will then be able to see those additional details when booking an appointment online:
After patients initially book their appointment online, you can automatically send a confirmation email. Automated reminder emails can also be sent out 1-5 days before their telehealth appointment.
Both confirmation and reminder emails can be customised to include details about their telehealth appointment, digital patient forms, and anything else that might be helpful. So, similar to online bookings, you can also include a link to the telehealth video guide.
To do this, head to Settings → Appointment confirmations or Appointment reminders. Within the email content window, you can add the telehealth video guide wherever you like:
Some patients may need more guidance, and letters are a great way to deliver some additional information.
Letters within Cliniko will allow you to set up letter templates which can then be further modified before sending the email to a patient. These templates can be set-up in advance via Settings → Letter templates.
Letters are also great if you prefer to send emails manually to your patients instead of relying on the automatic confirmation and reminder emails. Creating a letter template for telehealth, for example, can include a comprehensive guide for your patients that you may not want to send for every telehealth appointment or even every patient.
Plus, unlike confirmation and reminder emails, you can modify any of the letter template before sending it to the patient, which is great for custom messages you may want to include in your email:
Demonstrating telehealth isn’t just for your patients with existing appointments. Prospective clients may also be interested in seeing how it works before booking for the first time. Luckily, YouTube makes it easy to share videos or even embed them directly onto your site pages.
If you have a dedicated section or FAQs about telehealth on your website, you can either create a hyperlink that sends visitors to watch the video on YouTube or embed this video directly on your web page. We recommend embedding the video so your visitors can watch it without leaving your site.
We’ve mentioned in previous blog posts about marketing that social media is a crucial way to broadcast your clinic’s current opening hours for anyone to find. Sharing this video on your social media accounts—or even as a Google My Business post—is another chance for you to get the word out that your clinic is offering telehealth appointments and demonstrate how they work.
Finally, do you like the idea of using this video but prefer to write out the steps for your patients? No problem. You can find the entire transcript by navigating to the video on a desktop and clicking on the ellipsis button right underneath the video itself.
Select ‘Open transcript’, and the text will appear in a box near the top right of the screen.
You can also find more information about each step covered in the video over on our Telehealth guide for patients.
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