Why Embed Telehealth Services Within Salesforce Health Cloud?

Several factors are driving many healthcare organizations to invest in telehealth, including the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which recently accepted its last round of applications.

While standalone telehealth solutions should be evaluated by organizations that are planning to invest in the technology, it’s worth considering the additional benefits of incorporating telehealth services into a CRM system like Salesforce Health Cloud.

As an aside, standalone software vendors and software review sites have shifted toward referring to these as “telemedicine” platforms. “Telehealth” is a more catch-all label than telemedicine—it can also apply to services-at-a-distance for behavioral health and fitness & wellness. A CRM platform is also a good fit for both of these types of services.

As a company that implements and supports Health Cloud, we at J2 have used Vonage’s communication interfaces for healthcare to incorporate telehealth services into patient records within CRM.

The Benefits of Embedding Telehealth Services Within a CRM System

In healthcare environments, doctors primarily use a CRM system to manage their relationships with patients, which can also incorporate certain EHR data. A patient record can capture all interactions, including visits, phone calls, email, SMS, chat, and now—video. As of recently, organizations that are already using Salesforce can leverage their existing org for video communication.

In addition to staff having the ability to capture patient interaction, some of the reasons for embedding telehealth services within Salesforce Health Cloud are:

• Single login access to patient information and for communicating with patients
• Shared access to information among caregivers within an organization
• Logs of each telehealth session in the Salesforce patient record
• Archiving of past video sessions for later review
• Scheduling of follow-up sessions and check-ins with reminders to staff
• User permission access to patient data and interactions within the Salesforce platform

Because of Salesforce’s comprehensive and flexible data security model, telehealth services can function alongside many other custom solutions that have been developed within a broader Health Cloud implementation. In addition, each health system staff member is only able to see what their user permission allows.

Salesforce’s built-in design tools, along with third-party technologies such as Vonage’s, allow for addressing a wide range of healthcare requirements. In fact, J2’s consultants have been able to quickly provide time-saving solutions for a number of COVID-19 response use cases.