As the demand for telehealth services continues to grow, so does the need to find quality clinicians nationwide. For digital health companies, this is no small feat. With telehealth laws requiring licensed clinicians in the state the patient resides, attracting clinicians in all 50 states is crucial to meeting demand. Competition is growing in telehealth, and what will set your organization apart is delivering customized virtual care with rigorously trained, qualified clinicians that ensure a positive patient experience across the care spectrum. And that all starts with thoughtful recruiting, hiring, and training.
Clinician Recruiting: Finding the Right Fit
To create successful patient-clinician relationships, you have to attract the right talent. The first step in the recruiting process is to seek out clinicians in all 50 states by going through various posting sites, job boards, physician organizations, and other avenues. From there, you’ll want to tailor your job application and selection process to the needs of your business. For example, for some of our partners, we focus on personalized patient-clinician matching. In fact, it’s why clinicians and patients choose us. To enable this match, we typically have clinicians we’re considering fill out a reverse-matching quiz in which they share their professional history along with personal interests. And we apply this process to our work with other digital health companies too. By blending medical experience with personal pursuits, we’re able to spark a quality long-term relationship between clinicians, the partners they work for, and the patients they care for.
Clinician Interviewing: Evaluating Capabilities
After finding the right clinicians, you’ll want to consider your interview process. In addition to recruiting team members, senior medical team leaders should be heavily involved in evaluating candidates. At this stage, assess your clinical candidates for their technical abilities, virtual interpersonal skills, capacity to take on telehealth patients, the states in which they are currently licensed, and more. All of these considerations in interviewing help you get a jump on forecasting capacity. By customizing each step of the process, you’ll be able to find clinicians that naturally align with your brand ethos and deliver the quality of care that your offering demands.
Clinician Training: Establishing Best Practices
Now it’s time to begin the onboarding and training process. First, work out the operational details. Clinicians can be assigned to shifts, available on-demand, have specific visit turnaround time, and even be available to service particular time zones.
Think about the modality and rigor of training that you want to implement: one-on-one, in groups, in-person, remote, full-day, half-day, multi-week. You get the picture. While many clinicians are tech-savvy, you’ll undoubtedly need to incorporate technical training to ensure your clinicians are proficient with using the required chat app, video call, EMR, and other tools. Clinical protocol training is also imperative and can include mock patient interactions and example care plans. Each element of training and oversight prepares your clinicians to achieve high-quality patient interactions and efficiencies in workflows.
Clinician Background Checks and Verification: Supporting Quality
Parallel to clinician training comes background checks and verification. Part of this, of course, includes validating licenses to ensure that clinicians are in good standing with the applicable state medical boards. You should also consider helping your clinicians get licensed in additional states. By doing so, you’ll be better prepared to meet demand and prepare for future success.
Another quality assurance step that we take at SteadyMD is to track clinician-specific Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and use other quality indicators such as cancellation rates, retention rates, and patient feedback. Lastly, we have a comprehensive clinical, medical, and regulatory oversight operation that conducts regular quality reviews. By meticulously vetting our clinicians, we’re able to maintain top-notch providers and disciplined health care delivery for ourselves and the telehealth partners we power.
Everyone knows that your company is only as good as your team. Telehealth is no different. Your clinicians are the true faces of your organization, representing you and embodying your promise to deliver high-quality healthcare in a modern setting. By designing a process that uncovers the best-fitting clinicians, you can provide both clinicians and patients with a meaningful, high-quality experience and rest assured that your telehealth operation is set up to achieve its core mission.
Read Part 1: Forecasting Demand & Clinician Staffing.
Learn how SteadyMD can power your telehealth services and help you recruit, hire, and train clinicians in all 50 states. If you’re a clinician, learn how you can practice the way you want, from anywhere, according to your schedule.