Even before the COVID-19 pandemic kept us locked down and away from accessing our health professionals in person, telehealth was on the rise.
The convenience of contacting a doctor remotely to diagnose and get medicine for a sick child in the middle of the night or seeing your physical therapist without traveling is hugely beneficial. Chronic care patients, people with mobility concerns, and people seeking non-emergent care can get quality healthcare without leaving their homes. This makes this industry fertile ground for people who want to work here.
If you've not started a foray into telehealth, you may wonder, "How do I start a telehealth career"? Almost any job in the healthcare space can be translated to a telehealth field. Whether you are office support, a specialist, a physical therapist, a nurse, or another part of the medical field, you have a home in telehealth services — and we can help you find it.
What is telehealth?
Telehealth is about more than just virtual doctor visits, although that is what most people initially think. Telehealth is a secure digital communication platform that allows prescriptions to be filled faster and for patients to reach their medical providers in the most efficient way possible.
This often looks like virtual visits, but it can also be as simple as a quick check-in for a chronic pain management patient rather than a trip across town. Telehealth also makes it easier to fill prescriptions or to modify them than ever before.
What jobs exist in telehealth?
Nurses, doctors, and specialists are the most likely jobs you think of when you hear telehealth. While this is true, telehealth requires all of the secondary and ancillary support positions that a physical doctor's office requires, plus a robust digital presence.
Medical IT
Because the process of telehealth communication conveys a tremendous amount of highly sensitive private medical data, you need to have a system that will transmit it in a secure and HIPAA-compliant way.
You need the typical IT team for any online presence, but your team needs to understand HIPAA compliance's seriousness. You must also have a strong digital threat assessment team to keep patient data safe and secure.
If you have a past in IT and a passion for medicine, you will find many jobs in the telehealth field waiting for you.
Medical professionals
This is probably the most obvious category, but almost any doctor can perform virtual visits and telehealth services as a primary platform to reach their patients or as an additional income stream. Virtual visits are straightforward, and you do not necessarily need to be tech-savvy to interface with your patients. In particular, specialists within the same network are highly in demand because telehealth allows you to connect with them far faster than traditional referral methods. Tele-nursing is also in demand, potentially even higher than physicians.
So, whether you have a physical location now and want to branch out to the digital world, or you're a doctor looking to bolster your income stream by providing virtual visits, telehealth is waiting for you.
Office support
No doctor's office can run without administrative staff to ensure everything performs at its peak. Even on a virtual interface, customer service, record keeping, billing, and other critical aspects of office management are still a present need. Remote office work has gone up a thousand percent since the start of the pandemic for every business, and the medical field is no different. You can find a comfortable, remote job within the telehealth field if you have the experience and the desire to work hard.
Physical therapy
Chronic care patients, pain management patients, and physical therapy patients have a similar issue: mobility may be a problem for them. Traveling across town to attend in-person doctor's visits can be tricky, dangerous, or just painful and inconvenient. Luckily, telehealth allows you to interface with your patients digitally with minimal equipment.
Many physical therapy patients can do the exercises in their homes with minimal equipment or go to a more accessible location like a gym equipped for physical therapy rather than travel directly to your office. This gives you and your patients flexibility like never before.
Telehealth is here to stay
As the world becomes more digitally focused, telehealth will only grow in popularity. You can choose almost any aspect of the medical profession available now and translate it to a telehealth platform. If you're currently working in a doctor's office and you'd like to work remotely or have some aspect of your job become virtual, it's almost certain that you can.
ViTel can help you find jobs in telehealth that will carve out your career path in this field. Whether you're looking for qualified applicants for your business or you are looking for a job, ViTel can connect you. Remote work, in general, is a powerful tool to prevent doctor burnout, which is also on the rise across the world.
