Overview

There has been a lot of discussion around using technology to increase access to patient care and reach a target audience.  This can be a great resource for following up with patients so that they don’t have to make multiple return visits.  It’s especially beneficial if you can’t charge for those visits because the allowable amounts for the year have been met. 

Some ideas on how to plan a conference call/webinar as a follow-up appointment for any sort of educational intervention:

1. Set up a meeting time. To do this, set up an e-mail to the participants using www.meetingwizard.com. The site is free to access and it gives you the option to send out an e-mail request to multiple patients with multiple appointment options to see when the majority of those patients are free. They all respond via e-mail and once they have, you will have all of the responses and can pick the time with most available patients.
2. Now, if you decide you want to use a process like this to set up a meeting with your co-workers, you can use this or you can use some of the apps that are available now, but they require access to your calendar, which your co-worker may be willing to allow, but a patient wouldn’t. Those include Tungle, Doodle, TimeBridge, Setster, etc.
3. Now that you know when your on-line meeting will be held. The next thing you need to do is create a short power point presentation or maybe just an agenda that the call participants could follow.
4. If you decide this can be done strictly by phone you can set up a conference call internally—maybe your company has a conference call line they use or you can set up a free account at www.freeconferencecall.com This site will allow you to set up an account and you will be given a call in number, passcode and host code that is specific to you. Then, you would give the number and passcode to your participants and you would use the host code to start the call. This service also allows recording of calls so if you had a patient who missed the call, you can give them the info to call back and listen in.
5. If you decide that you would like to show a power point or certain slides, lab results or spreadsheets of results, then you may want to set up a webinar or on-line meeting. You can purchase a subscription to on-line webinar companies like www.gotowebinar.com where you can schedule a meeting, invite attendees to register for the meeting and join you at the requested time. When using this tool, you will actually be showing your screen to your participants while they are home on their computer.
6. If you have multiple educators at multiple locations, you can even transfer whose screen is showing to allow another educator do a separate portion of the presentation with slides from his or her screen.
7. One thing to keep in mind when doing either a conference call or webinar is to keep your patients engaged. You can actually ask open ended questions when on the conference call so that you can get some feedback. At those times you can ask your patients to unmute their phones Additionally, during a webinar you can ask the patients some poll questions to get them involved. For example, you may ask your patients: How often do you check your blood sugar? Answers might include: daily, 2-3 times a day, weekly or never. Then, you can use those answers as part of your presentation. Also, if you set up your presentation in www.gotomeeting.com then you can also share your video and see all of the patients as if they are all around a table.
8. These webinars can also be recorded and e-mailed or posted on a website for view at a later date Also, you can record and choose to mail the recorded webinar via a free service at www.yousendit.com. Webinars are often larger files and if you can’t send it via e-mail you can send it via yousentit.com.
9. Lastly, follow up with your patients and ask them if they enjoyed this approach to follow up. Do a survey using www.surveymonkey.com and ask them what you might want to know Some questions could include:
   1. Was the scheduling process easy to use and convenient for you?
   2. Did you like the on-line interaction rather than calling to schedule this follow up time?
   3. Was it easy to use the conference call system or the webinar system?
   4. Did you have any trouble logging in, hearing, seeing the screen, etc.?
   5. If you missed the call or webinar did you listen to or view the recording?
   6. Would you want to join us for future follow up meetings?

I hope this was helpful to learn that there are resources available on-line to help with scheduling, holding and evaluating phone or on-line meetings.