by John Norton
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6 December 2019
Potomac Physicians Associates (PPA), a Primary Care group of 28 providers across three locations, worked with five different Telehealth vendors before switching to OTTO Health. According to Dr. Steven Schwartz, a family physician and the Medical Director of Potomac Physician Associates, “with the other vendors, scheduling was always a major barrier. Our staff was having to schedule in two places, and it just wasn’t efficient for our clinical workflows. OTTO’s integration with NextGen Healthcare made Telehealth incredibly simple, and actually achievable.” PPA has found offering Virtual Visits allows them to reduce cancellations. “We were scheduling weeks out, but since introducing Virtual Visits, we’ve been able to convert between 25%-35% of our in-clinic visits that would have been cancellations, to Virtual Visits. As a result, our schedules have freed up, giving us the ability to see more patients.” He continued, “Virtual Visits have worked phenomenally well for medication follow-up and check-ins for our ADD/ADHD, diabetic and mental health patients, as well as patients dealing with UTIs.” PPA is also using OTTO to transition phone calls to reimbursable Virtual Visits. “Before exploring Telehealth, our providers would get frustrated with phone calls, because frankly it would turn into a 15-20 minute call that we were not reimbursed for,” said Dr.Schwartz. “One of the best things about OTTO, is that they are always working on new features to help improve clinical efficiency and they make it easy to customize settings for your practice. For instance, you are able to tie visit types to specific intake questions that the patient is prompted with prior to their Virtual Visit. Then the provider can easily see those answers and check if they have paid a co-pay, if necessary,” said Schwartz.