The Problem:
Telehealth holds great promise for the medical field, as a way to bring quality healthcare to those unable to make physical visits to providers. However, many existing telehealth solutions do not offer the quality and features needed to bring telehealth into the mainstream of acute care. BlueJeans Telehealth solves that problem by providing a simple, smart way for providers to meet with patients over video. BlueJeans Telehealth maximizes ease of use, reimbursement management, and provides comprehensive integration with EHR platforms and medical interpreter services.
Who Was Involved in the Innovation:
To create BlueJeans Telehealth, we worked closely with an advisory board of health system clinicians and healthcare decisionmakers. Experience working with healthcare providers during the pandemic was invaluable in informing what matters most in the delivery of world class virtual care.
What the Innovation Entailed:
BlueJeans Telehealth is a HIPAA-ready, mobilefriendly telehealth platform that is easy to use for clinicians and patients, while ensuring security and privacy. It was designed from the ground up for healthcare organizations to simplify the virtual visit experience and offer greater access to care, provide more flexibility for providers and patients, improve safety and extend the reach of services available. By mapping the user experience to clinical team workflows, BlueJeans Telehealth helps replicate the experience of onsite care encounters and patient interactions while also providing the flexibility of virtual care. BlueJeans Telehealth is built on the core BlueJeans video conferencing platform to include features such as HD video and Dolby Audio. With easy-to-use interfaces, quick join functionality and features that promote successful virtual encounters, patients can meet with providers from their home or any remote location via their computer or mobile devices. Electronic health record (EHR) interoperability enables real-time scheduling and provides quick check-in and join capabilities. Furthermore, integrations with medical interpreter services lets providers and patients communicate reliably, regardless of language barriers.
Specific features include:
Improved Patient Experience:
BlueJeans Telehealth enables joining with only a few clicks, with no app download required. Patients simply click on the televisit URL, and they are taken to their appointment. If the provider wants to create a “waiting room” experience, they have the option to customize the patient landing/holding screen with relevant articles, videos and content in preparation for the visit.
Provider Experience:
To maximize efficiencies between each appointment and streamline the provider experience, BlueJeans Telehealth directly integrates with popular Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems such as Epic, enabling providers the ability to access telehealth appointments from the same portal they use to access patient records, see upcoming appointments, and take notes. When the patient is ready to meet, providers are notified in their EHR calendar, saving time and dramatically improving visit efficiencies.
Managing Telehealth Reimbursements—a Major Problem for Providers
To streamline the reimbursements process, BlueJeans Telehealth is available billed in a per-visit model. Each visit can be accurately tracked to help streamline billing and reimbursements for hospital and clinic administrators. These visits can then be batch processed for administrators to manage back-end paperwork more efficiently.
BlueJeans Telehealth: Built for Healthcare from the Ground Up
Most existing telehealth solutions are either video conferencing solutions repurposed to work in a telehealth setting, or legacy telehealth solutions without the premium video conferencing features essential for an effective virtual visit. BlueJeans Telehealth brings together the power of the BlueJeans video conferencing platform, but closely simulates an in-person encounter that maximizes telehealth efficiencies, while providing the benefits of telehealth to patients and clinicians.
Built-in accessibility is another important focus for healthcare providers, as they need to ensure that care can be extended to all those who need it. BlueJeans Telehealth integrates with Medical Interpreter Services like AMN and Voyce. During a visit, the provider can click on the service of choice and invite an interpreter into a visit as a participant. BlueJeans Telehealth also supports transcription and closed captioning by default.
Additionally, Verizon’s focus is to utilize BlueJeans’ core capabilities of video conferencing to amplify use cases such as telehealth on top of the Verizon network (including 5G, edge computing, and AI-enabled solutions) for a Connected Health initiative that will change how healthcare is delivered in the future. BlueJeans Telehealth is only the beginning, and we will soon start to feature close integration with technology partners and additional innovation in the product to extend the capabilities of virtual care.
Our ultimate goal: to fully replicate an in-person visit – reducing the cost of care, extending the reach of care, and ensuring better outcomes for every patient.