Telehealth video office visits are an indispensable tool during the period of virus travel and social distancing restrictions. There are LOTS of choices. I will cover just two that bubbled to the top after lots of research and several demos. Most video conferencing vendors have a set of pretty standard features. I deemed two additional features as necessary for a medical office: HIPAA compliance and a waiting room capability. This post is a summary of Doxy.me. See Part 2 of the post for a summary of LetsTalkInteractive.com.
Doxy.me is by far the simplest video conference application for both patient and provider of all the ones that I looked at. It is intended for a medical provider and therefore is HIPAA compliant. You can try it out by just going to the website and setting up a free account … it is easy to be up and running in under 15 minutes.
The main features of all account types, including free are:
- Nothing to download by either the patient or provider. The patient just clicks on a custom URL (like doxy.me/DrOfficeName) to enter the waiting room
- The number of sessions and time length of each session is unlimited
- Text chat within the session is available
- Works with a slow connection
Some offices may be content with just the options available in the free account. There are two paid options: Pro & Clinic. The features are nearly identical as described on their Pricing page except on the “Groups” and “Add on” tabs. The significant additional features with paid accounts are:
- Text/email notifications of patients in the waiting room (vs. notification only when the provider’s doxy.me account is open in the browser)
- Group calls allowing several interested parties with different devices and/or locations to be on the call
- Support via on-demand chat or a schedule phone/video call (vs. just email)
The only application downsides that I have seen so far are:
- Once a patient knows the provider’s virtual address (doxy.me/DrOfficeName) they can try to connect any time. In a sense, it is like a telephone number that anybody can call, but it doesn’t have to be answered.
- A Doxy.me competitor mentioned that the Doxy video platform is WebRTC (I had to look that up: Web Real Time Communications) which he said could have a 20-30% failed engagement rate. I can’t speak to that other than I have a client that has been using Doxy.me for 20-40 patient encounters per day for two weeks. Based on their feedback, I would estimate the connection is made on the first try more than 95% of the time. There were a few performance issues the first week when it seemed the whole world was transitioning to work from home, but none since.
Doxy.me is a great way to get started with a Telehealth remote video call offering. Some may find that the basic features are all they need and will continue with the service in the future. For a more powerful, slightly more complicated service, see Seeing Patients Remotely – Part 2.