Support
The TeleSpecialists Advantage
Access to healthcare continues to be a challenge across the US. This affects hospitals and facilities of all sizes and is seen in primary as well as specialty care. Physician shortages have been widely described for nearly 20 years. As a result, telehealth is widely accepted as a valuable tool to enhance access to care in any community.
The demands for specialty care have been escalating, compounded by the recent pandemic. Let TeleSpecialists help you:
- Bring a new specialty to your hospital
- Cover gaps in specialty coverage
- Offer clinical leadership in program oversight
As a lean organization, TeleSpecialists’ physicians are committed to efficient, high quality patient care by:
- Eliminating costly transfers
- Optimizing clinical workflows
- Utilizing evidence-based protocols to optimize outcomes and reduce readmissions
Our commitment to quality is setting the telehealth industry standard. This is demonstrated by:
- Customized TeleCare software
- Collaborative development of site-specific dashboards with quality metrics
- Accreditation by The Joint Commission
- ISO Certified organization
High levels of patient satisfaction have been repeatedly demonstrated with telemedicine technology. We aid that with:
- Timely evaluations
- Collaborative encounters with families and care teams
- Avoiding inconvenient and costly transfers
TeleCare
How TeleCare Can Help Your Facility:
- HIPAA compliant
- No additional cost to your facility
- Real-time quality metrics for process improvement
- Reduced physician response times
- Easy-to-access reports and case reviews for authorized users
- Real-time quality tracking
- Standardized platform and data capturing
- Data governance
- Better timestamping and tracking
- Faster upload of notes to EMR
- Streamlined communication during emergent cases
- Increased process transparency
- Cloud-based, compatible with any system
About TeleCare:
TeleCare was developed by TeleSpecialists to optimize communication and support quality metric review. Its functionality supports our Rapid Response Center (RRC) staff to optimally route urgent requests to available physicians, aids in data management by our physicians and generates valuable reports for our hospital partners to gauge the effective responsiveness of the TeleSpecialists team.
With TeleCare, TeleSpecialists partner hospitals have access to customizable dashboards with target metrics developed in collaboration between hospital stakeholders and the TeleSpecialists Quality Program Specialist (QPS) team.
Our proprietary TeleCare software is provided exclusively to our partner hospitals at no additional charge.
What Makes TeleCare Exceptional:
- Electronic alert capability for fastest TeleSpecialists’ notification
- Integration of RRC, Physician and Quality team data
- Real-time data review available
- Hospital-specific dashboards and accounts
- Process Improvement Tools, including Root Cause Analysis Generator, Fishbone Diagrams and Metric Outlier Identifiers
TeleSpecialists Quality Team also monitors quality metrics closely in TeleCare. Our Quality Program Specialists assess outliers to quickly address issues. TeleSpecialists’ response times, typically less than 4 minutes, are much quicker than the industry standard; however, we are always looking for ways to help our hospital partners improve workflow processes.
Credentialing and Licensing
TeleSpecialists Credentialing and Licensing department has a robust team of credentialing and licensing specialists with state-of-the-art processes for seamless enrollment. The experienced Team ensures that all TeleSpecialists physicians are well qualified to practice as per each state’s requirements. They also assist physicians in gathering the materials necessary for all credentialing requirements to guarantee accurate and timely distribution to the medical facility.
Implementation and Onboarding
TeleSpecialists can provide your hospital with a road map to help you implement a comprehensive telemedicine program from the ground up, that works for your system. Our Implementation and Onboarding Team begins with a strategy to build your clinical program, then tailors your telemedicine program within your existing infrastructure.
Our Implementation Plan consists of four distinct phases:
Planning and Analysis:
- Team members identified
- Informal meetings and introduction
- Review of current workflows, data gathering, and accreditation goals
- Culminates in a Kick-off Call to review the implementation plan and timeline
Design:
- Implementation team members identified for routine follow-up
- Weekly meetings to gauge status of implementation steps
- Additional ad hoc meetings are scheduled as needed to address clinical, operational, or technical questions or concerns
- Planning for lean transformation event with agendas and participant list generated
Lean Transformation:
- Half or whole day on-site collaborative event
- Rapid Improvement Workshop to map out optimal future state workflow
- Optional education and training of clinical staff
- Workflow optimization, standard work finalized in subsequent days
- Support for staff education
- Mock drill completion prior to go live
Monitoring and Support:
- Post-go live hand off from Implementation Team to Quality Team
- Quality metric and dashboard development
- Routine meetings to review data and program performance
- Review of outlier cases and process improvement planning as needed
Rapid Response Center
TeleSpecialists has a Rapid Response Center (RRC) to take calls from TeleSpecialists’ clients. A designated hotline number will be assigned to your medical facility.
By keeping our call center in-house, TeleSpecialists manages the quality and speed in which our partner’s calls are taken. For emergent cases, such as Stroke Alerts, the team in the RRC answers the call, records the information in TeleCare, and dispatches a physician directly. This process contributes to TeleSpecialists leading the industry in on-screen physician response time, averaging less than 4 minutes. The call times are stamped, and the data is readily available for quality review by clients. Quality metrics, including our internal response metrics, are reported on every patient, regardless of outlier status.
For non-emergent cases, such as rounding, the RRC and hospital communicate to schedule time for the TeleNeuroHospitalist and the hospital’s nurse navigator to round on patients (via telemedicine cart.) Scheduling in advance allows the physician time to review and prepare for rounds.
Each shift also has a call center Nurse Manager that manages the RRC team on shift and is available to evaluate Stat Consults (non-Stroke Alerts) before assigning a TeleNeurologist.
The Medical Staff
TeleSpecialists has a Chief Medical Officer for each specialty and an entire Medical Staff Division working behind the scenes to ensure our physicians are meeting educational and CME requirements.
Due to the vast number of hospitals that we serve, each physician undergoes intensive preparation to learn the systems and workflows of each of the hospitals where they will be seeing patients.
Physician quality performance is closely monitored with processes including visual audits, chart audits, peer-reviewed cases, and a monthly scorecard measuring specific stroke metrics. As a practice accredited by The Joint Commission, we conduct Focused Professional Practice Evaluations (FPPE) as well as Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluations (OPPE). In this way, our Medical Director and their team can closely monitor the quality of every TeleSpecialists physician and ensure their clinical performance meets the high expectations set by our organization.
TeleSpecialists also provides formal didactic as well as practical in-person training sessions targeted for medical staff and allied staff who will be working with us to ensure a smooth transition to all TeleNeurology services.
Quality Services Beyond the Emergency Room
Our partnership to improve quality starts on day one – every facility is assigned a personal Quality Program Specialist (QPS) to support Process Improvement initiatives that work with your hospital to obtain top-performing results.
Additional resources include a Vice President and Director with over 35 years of quality experience together.
