The Pandemic Impact to Clinics
The Coronavirus has forced many clinics to close, out of fear that they may be putting their patients at risk of infection. It seems that clinic owners have to choose to sacrifice their patients’ health in order to protect their patients’ health. As things shift over to the “new normal” clinics will have to find new ways of serving their patients while keeping them safe from infection.
Some clinics have chosen to shut their doors indefinitely, until the world returns to how it was. They may be optimistic that this pandemic will be over shortly. Others aren’t so optimistic and realize that they might have to change their operating basis slightly (or majorly) so that they can continue serving the patients that rely on them.
Many clinics are beginning to offer outpatient in-home services to their patients. Outpatient in-home services are billed the same as services done in the clinic, the only difference is that the clinician goes to the patient’s home and provides care there. By offering the services in-home, and taking the appropriate infection control precautions, clinics can protect their patients and continue servicing them as well. Clinics may find some significant difficulty in shifting from managing in-house staff to field staff, though.
What’s The Next Step?
FeldCare Connects has just launched our outpatient in-home program, called FeldCare Direct, and our patients are extremely satisfied that they don’t have to go to a clinic to continue receiving care. To manage clinical staff, FeldCare utilizes CliniConnects to help automate the matching process and optimize the patient-clinician match. It makes managing field staff in outpatient in-home extremely easy.
For clinics, a software tool like CliniConnects is a critical tool for making the shift to providing care in the field. Only time will tell how long it will be until things return to normal. Patients are out there, eager to continue receiving the care they need. Clinicians are out of work and are eager to continue helping their patients. But as fears ease and the economy begins to open up, the most important question to ask won’t be, “when will things return to normal?” but “how can I help my patients in this ‘new normal?’”
Luckily, for patients and clinicians that work with FeldCare, they won’t have to be out of care or out of work! If you would like more information about FeldCare Direct, go to feldcaredirect.com. If you want to check out CliniConnects, go to Clinniconnects.com.
