The Connected Clinic: Virtual Appointments Made Easy

Did you know that Teams can also help you deliver telehealth services to your patients? The experience is made easy for the connected clinic staff and patients! Microsoft Teams has several features designed specifically for healthcare organizations, such as virtual appointments, electronic health record integration, secure messaging, and more. This post will explore how Microsoft Teams Premium enhances the virtual appointment experience for both staff and patients in a clinic.  After setting up Virtual Appointments your telehealth workflows and patient outcomes will drastically improve as well as comply with security and privacy regulations. We will also share some tips and best practices for using Teams for telehealth. 

 

A few of the patient care activities where Microsoft Teams is frequently used includes: 

• Virtual Appointments 
• Pre-op screenings 
• Therapy sessions 
• Rural patient outreach 
• On-Demand urgent care 
• Care management for chronic conditions 

 

Teams can help you with your most complex and specialized telehealth scenarios. There are three frequently used options for integrating appointments into your workflow: 

• The EHR Connector: Virtual telehealth appointments can seamlessly be integrated and launched by clinicians directly from the EHR system. 
• The Virtual Appointments App in Teams: Appointments can be made using this app in Teams. 
• The Virtual Appointment Graph API: This allows for more complex and custom integrations. 

The focus of this article is using the Virtual Appointments App, a Teams Premium license is required to unlock advanced Virtual Appointments capabilities such as viewing the queue of scheduled and on-demand appointments, SMS text notifications, custom waiting rooms, and analytics. You can also publish consistent video backgrounds for your clinical staff. 

 

Virtual Appointment workflow 

The virtual appointment app enables a seamless end-to-end experience for telehealth engagements, and helps you deliver high-quality care to your patients remotely. For scheduling, member of your care team will use the Virtual Appointment app to schedule a virtual appointment. This app provides a central hub for all your virtual appointment needs from within Teams. Every member of the care team can use this app to schedule and manage virtual visits and is integrated with your Bookings Calendar. The appointment can be set up in a way that will automatically send an SMS notifications and reminders to your patients. The SMS message includes a link to join the meeting when the time arrives.  

 

Screenshot showing the App from the Teams Desktop client: 

 

To get started with the Virtual Appointments App, you will need to configure a few things about your connected clinic: 

1. Create a calendar for the clinic’s appointments 
2. Define appointment templates 
3. Configure staff roles and access 

 

Step 1: Creating the Calendar 

On the Home page of the Virtual Appointments App, select Create a calendar. It will ask you for the name of the clinic, email address, and phone number. You can also upload your logo; all of this is used in patient communications such as the appointment confirmation and reminders about the visit.  

 

Screenshot showing the initial calendar setup: 

 

Step 2: Defining the Appointment types 

The Virtual Appointments app in Microsoft Teams allows you to create templates for different types of virtual appointments. These templates allow you to pre-configure several different options, such as: 

• Appointment reminder preferences 
• Visit duration and buffer time between visits 
• Customize the notification email 
• Enable SMS / Text message notifications 
• Link a form for patients to fill out before the visit 

Screenshot of the configuration window for an Appointment Template: 

 

Step 3: Adding Staff 

Finally, you will configure who has access to use the Virtual Appointments App for this clinic.  

 

Creating Virtual Appointments 

From the Schedule tab in the Virtual Appointments App, select “New booking.” 

Select the appropriate appointment type from the menu, and all defaults you populated in the template will populate in it. At this point, the scheduler will enter the patient's personal info so they can receive the confirmation and appointment reminders. 

Below is a screenshot showing the options for scheduling a new appointment: 

 

The patient will receive a confirmation email and reminder emails/ SMS messages as configured in the appointment template. The reminders will include a simple link for joining the appointment. App download is not required for the patient!! 

 

Screenshot of the confirmation email sent to the patient: 

 

The patient will be able to join the appointment with a single click, right from the browser on their mobile device or computer. No additional software or apps are needed, and patients are not required to create a Microsoft account or sign in to join the appointment. Patients are placed in a lobby until the provider joins and admits them, they can also test their audio and video when they join. 

 

Managing Virtual Appointments 

But wait, there’s more!!  Once your clinic has scheduled virtual appointments, the Queue tab will show all the scheduled appointments and activities for the day. The Queue will automatically update as patients join the queue and through the lifecycle of the visit. You can also easily send a reminder to a patient who is late or missed their appointment.  Soon you will also be able to chat with patients who are waiting in the queue. 

 

 

Analytics and Appointment Reporting 

And there’s still MORE!!  This is one of the best parts of the solution. The analytics tab in the Virtual Appointments app lets you measure rich analytics on the performance of virtual appointments. You can see metrics such as total appointments, average wait time, average duration, customer satisfaction and more. You can also filter the data by date range, staff member or service type. The analytics tab helps you monitor and improve your customer experience and engagement. 

 

Screenshot from the Virtual Appointments app showing the Analytics tab: 

 

 

Staff at a clinic can see details about visits at the locations which they are assigned, and organization level analytics are available for administrators of the Virtual Appointments App. 

 

Conclusion 

Microsoft Teams Premium is a powerful tool for telehealth visits that can help you provide better care for your patients, save time and money, and improve collaboration with other healthcare providers. We highlighted how to monitor scheduled and on-demand Virtual Appointments, configure SMS text notifications, custom waiting rooms, and veiw valuable analytics to help with managing patient care.  We also shared three simple steps to get started.   

 

We hope you found this guide helpful and easy to follow.  What do you think of Microsoft Teams for telehealth? Have you tried it before? How did it go? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. We would love to hear from you! 

 

 

Mark Litwin & Sue Vencill    

  

 

Resources: 

• Use the Virtual Appointments app in Microsoft Teams 
• Manage the join experience for Teams Virtual Appointments on browsers 
• Microsoft Teams Virtual Appointments usage report 
• Microsoft Teams Premium licensing 
• Microsoft Teams Premium Experiences and How to Set It Up 
• Microsoft Teams Premium - Overview for administrators 
• Get Started with Microsoft Teams Premium