Fortis Healthcare, India’s leading healthcare solutions provider, successfully rolled out online consultations for patients in 23 hospitals across the network in India. As the country continues with COVID 19 lockdown, the step was conceived to continue patient care services without risking the health of patients or doctors. Both tele-consults, as well as video consult services, have been running successfully with encouraging responses from patients. To date, over 8000 consults have taken place via the e-consulting medium. A total of 393 e-consults were conducted across the network on 25th April and 365 were done on 24th April.
Details of the process:
- Both audio consults and video consults are enabled by the Microsoft Teams platform. In some cases, simple telephonic consults are also happening depending on the comfort of the patients
- Through the Fortis website or call center, patients can request for an e-consult. For those with the ‘myFortis’ application, a push notification is sent with a link to book e-consults
- A landing page has been created on the website which helps patients choose their hospital and specialty. They are then contacted by the call center and an e-appointment is booked. The payment link is sent via SMS to the patient
- The agent from the respective hospital then uses the internal enterprise collaboration tool (MS Teams) to book a e-consultation between the doctor and the patient. The e-meeting link is sent through the invite and the platform also sends out appointment reminders to both patient and doctor
- At the stipulated time, the patient joins the meeting by accessing the link in the invite as a guest user using a camera-enabled device and waits for the turn in the virtual lobby
- Once the doctor arrives at the e-meeting, the patient is allowed into the meeting and e-consultation is provided in keeping with the guidelines issued by the Ministry Of Health & Family Welfare (MOHFW).
- Post consultation the prescription is uploaded on the platform which can be downloaded by the patient and a copy is sent via email to his/her email address