How To Select The Right Telemedicine Company

For your employees and their families, virtual care is more accessible, normal, and top-of-mind than ever. That's a big shift from just a few years ago — According to research from McKinsey & Company, telehealth (including both virtual care benefits and virtually-delivered health care services in a medical setting) levels are 38 times what they were before the pandemic.

Employers are adding more virtual care solutions to meet needs and address costs. And it's not just about getting help for a middle-of-the-night fever. A virtual healthcare provider can effectively address mental and behavioral health, chronic disease, musculoskeletal conditions, and can even provide primary care. For many, the family physician has been replaced by telemedicine visits. When employees have access to the right suite of telemedicine services, it's possible to provide high-quality healthcare that's easy to access and results in positive outcomes, even through a video visit.

For any employer who's serious about fully capturing the benefits of telemedicine, it's crucial to choose the right telemedicine provider - one that engages employees throughout their healthcare experience, focuses on whole-person care, and is easy to launch and grow. Asking the following questions can help businesses of any size select the right telemedicine provider for their employees.

How does the telemedicine provider engage the user?

Employees seeking virtual care or telemedicine services want an easy, accessible solution. Post-pandemic, between 40 and 60% of consumers are interested “in a set of broader virtual health solutions, such as a “digital front door” or lower-cost virtual-first health plan.”

A provider that offers integrated virtual care within a care navigation platform can solve this need and increase telemedicine use. If members are coming to a platform to access a wide variety of healthcare and benefits-related services, there's more opportunity to redirect them to telemedicine. Live support staff can engage members and point them to a video visit when appropriate. Virtual care navigation platforms also enable your team with tools for proactive outreach and reminders, which can help employees remember to ask for a telemedicine visit next time they need help.

Before you add more point solutions, consider this: a single, siloed service will never gain as much traction as an integrated platform that brings users in through a wide range of channels.

Do they focus on caring for the whole person?

The best telemedicine providers offer employees longitudinal, whole-person care. If the goal is to contain rising medical costs and help employees get the care they need, telemedicine providers must be able to see the whole picture of an employees’ health, from acute needs to chronic care, and recommend solutions. It’s essential that they can use data and insights taken throughout the individuals’ healthcare journey to build a treatment and care plan, as well as a relationship with the individual. This is the personalized support employees expect from their healthcare experience.

When this service is accessible through a healthcare navigation platform, telemedicine can combine forces with offerings like medical Bill Review, prescription savings, appointment scheduling, and more. When you unite several components of employee benefits through a common platform, they help inform one another and lead to the best possible outcome for the user. 

Are they easy to implement?

As more point solutions enter the virtual healthcare space, brokers and employers have to weigh the benefits of new virtual care programs against the burden of implementation. Each new point solution represents a time commitment for their teams, new sites to access and apps to add, and a new learning curve for employees. For small teams, this can make implementing the solutions they really want for primary care, chronic care, mental healthcare, MSK care, and more simply impossible. 

But when these solutions are integrated behind a single front door, the equation changes. With one implementation process, employees will get access to an app that makes learning about and using all their benefits, including telemedicine and virtual care services, much simpler. That means one download, one source of email and text reminders, and one brand to associate with their healthcare needs. Best of all, when new benefits are added, there’s no new technology to learn and no starting from scratch with implementation. Instead, teams can add off-cycle benefits quickly and easily. Employees can access virtual care benefits through the same front door as always, with the same satisfying results. 

Select the right telemedicine company

As consumers become more familiar and even hungry for telemedicine solutions, employers who want to exceed expectations need to carefully evaluate providers and solutions. When you select the right telemedicine provider, it’s easy for employees to find the right care at the right moment. Everyone in your workplace, from the newfangled techie to the older employee whose age is beginning to catch up with them, will thank you for simplifying their healthcare experience. Asking the right questions about your telemedicine provider will ensure you find one that your employees won't be able to live without. 

This post was first published in 2018 and was updated in 2022.