<p>Telemedicine navigates a combination of issues including strained healthcare systems, an increase in care demand, ease of use, data security, client confidentiality, aging populations, healthcare provider shortages, professional compliance and serves rural geographies. That’s why the world has ramped up its use of technologies and pivoted to digital operations to assist in the battle against COVID-19 while reducing the risk of transmitting the virus in clinical settings. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://datacentrereview.com/2021/03/telemedicine-do-the-benefits-outweigh-the-privacy-issues-for-patients/" target="_blank">Telemedicine has benefitted significantly from these advances</a>, which will continue to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/364539" target="_blank">grow in the future as a permanent form of healthcare delivery</a>. These alternative medical services have increased in popularity while creating a space for traditional healthcare providers to update their service offerings and allowing hospitals and healthcare professionals to deliver quality care safely and remotely. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, like many high-risk industries, new technological developments can also give opportunistic fraudsters the chance to thrive and cause irreparable damage to many stakeholders. First and foremost, the poor delivery of virtual healthcare compromises patient safety and privacy. Negligence and malpractice also thoroughly <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner/resources/how-to-safeguard-your-company-reputation-with-background-screening" target="_blank">damage the reputation of telemedicine providers</a>, which is often irreparable. </p>
<p>Recruiting and onboarding telehealth providers come with unique challenges for healthcare organizations. Here are six ways that organizations can efficiently recruit and hire healthcare professionals to create the ultimate telemedicine workforce:</p>
<h2>1. Flexible Hiring Practices</h2>
<p>While remote processes have become the norm, specific in-person observations are no longer part of the equation. So when hiring for telemedicine, we can no longer depend on a peer’s reference or assessment from observing the candidate’s competencies as they don’t share a physical workspace. It’s essential to adapt to ensure that the correct amount of qualified staff are in place for telehealth services to run smoothly.</p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://zoom.us/" target="_blank">Zoom</a> and other virtual conferencing tools have played a significant part in the remote hiring and interview process. As telemedicine is a great way to stem staffing shortages, online recruitment processes allow recruiters to interact virtually with international candidates. </p>
<p>Telemedicine detaches recruiters from hiring someone whose peers can attest to their physical skills. Organizations may lose out on truly understanding a healthcare professional’s competencies because they have no colleagues to observe their work ethic or vouch for their skills. That’s why when hiring it’s crucial to have comprehensive recruiting processes that work around a telemedicine candidate’s lack of physical competency verification. </p>
<h2>2. Invest in the Right Technologies</h2>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="535" src="https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_230372437-1024x535.jpg" alt="Patient Privacy and Data Security Measures" class="wp-image-11310" title="Patient Privacy and Data Security Measures" srcset="https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_230372437-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_230372437-300x157.jpg 300w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_230372437-768x401.jpg 768w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_230372437.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Patient privacy and data security measures</figcaption></figure>
<p>It’s crucial to use the best technology to deliver quality care to patients. Urgent healthcare issues can be addressed in real-time and treatments can be administered within minutes, offering improved patient care quality.<a href="https://www.ajmc.com/view/leveraging-remote-behavioral-health-interventions-to-improve-medical-outcomes-and-reduce-costs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> An American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) study</a> shows that easy and improved access to healthcare professionals meant telemedicine patients have 38% fewer hospital admissions. </p>
<p>Naturally, the expanded use of telemedicine has raised several, perfectly understandable privacy and data concerns. Malicious hackers targeted various video conferencing tools like <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://zoom.us/" target="_blank">Zoom</a> as its popularity rose throughout the pandemic. Even the FBI and Microsoft have warned of fraudsters targeting domains and communication apps. Risk and compliance issues also come from the number of employees, patients and contractors accessing the telemedicine networks, creating security risks. </p>
<p>While telehealth comes with many benefits for all stakeholders, particularly during a crisis, it is critical to support and protect patient privacy and health-related data with secure and innovative technology. Technologies like <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.unlock-bc.com/news/2021-02-11/uae-dataflow-groups-trueprofile-utilizes-blockchain-for-telemedicine-applications" target="_blank">blockchain are the ideal solution to protect health-related data and patients</a>. This decentralized data storage solution ensures that no central party controls the data allowing telemedicine to be regarded as a trustable healthcare tool.</p>
<h2>3. Verify Medical Professionals</h2>
<p>Telemedicine falls under the high-risk industry category and, as a result, can be prone to attracting opportunistic scammers and unqualified candidates. Before focusing on whether a candidate is digitally able or equipped to navigate telehealth tools efficiently, we must ensure that the telemedicine candidate is credible, capable and qualified for the role. The risks and consequences of having unverified and incompetent individuals within high-risk positions, such as healthcare delivery, include expensive lawsuits, irreparable reputation damage, loss of life and imprisonment. Regardless of the healthcare service, it must be delivered by credible, verified and qualified professionals. Overlooking verification risks patient safety and diminishes the credibility of the services.</p>
<p>The best way to avoid these issues is to ensure that thorough pre-employment background checks are conducted. Using technology-driven identity verification steps mitigates fraud, saves a huge amount of time, reduces hiring costs and eliminates the <a href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner/resources/cost-of-making-a-bad-hire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cost of a bad hire</a>.</p>
<p>Asking for proof that an applicant is precisely who they say they are stops employment fraud in its tracks, saves time and hiring costs. Using this as a component in your hiring process significantly reduces the risks and costs of fraudulent employees. Instant results allow recruiters to move on to the next steps in hiring the perfect candidate for their organization. Multifactor authentication (MFA or 2FA), ID and credential verification repel cyberattacks and fraudulent activities. </p>
<h2>4. Expand Your Telehealth Offerings</h2>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="535" src="https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_1725199627-1024x535.jpg" alt="Expand Your Telehealth Offerings" class="wp-image-11311" title="Expand Your Telehealth Offerings" srcset="https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_1725199627-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_1725199627-300x157.jpg 300w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_1725199627-768x401.jpg 768w, https://production-prod-trueprofile-blogassets-origin.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/04/shutterstock_1725199627.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Expand your telehealth offerings</figcaption></figure>
<p>A thriving telemedicine market has increased the demand for a variety of new telemedicine positions across various disciplines in nursing, medicine and care. Healthcare organizations and telehealth providers are now busy expanding their service offerings to accommodate this demand by recruiting healthcare staff with varying skills and experience. </p>
<p>The right technologies and approaches allow end-users to embrace new telehealth offerings with open arms. Certain healthcare organizations contract and outsource their vacancies while others hire the necessary professionals to deliver these virtual services. Telemedicine services rising in popularity include chronic disease management, remote appointments, psychiatry, mental health support, monitoring and prescription renewals.</p>
<h2>5. Inspire Patient Confidence</h2>
<p>As a newer approach to healthcare delivery for many, patients and clients may be hesitant to switch from the traditional to the modern route of communications. Telehealth providers must inspire trust in their patients by hiring verified and reputable medical professionals to deliver the relevant services. </p>
<p>While telehealth solutions, technology, delivery and practices are improving, providers must remain innovative to keep up with these changes, promote best practices, and continue quality care while ensuring that patient safety is at the forefront of all telemedicine hiring and delivery decisions with the help of innovative blockchain technology.</p>
<h2>6. Recruit With Confidence</h2>
<p>It can be difficult to hire and recruit within the telemedicine industry, but it doesn’t have to be. Document verification companies allow candidates to get their legitimate documents verified. Databases of pre-verified candidates, like <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://lp.trueprofile.io/recruit-medical-staff-free-trial/" target="_blank">TrueProfile.io Recruiting</a>, assure healthcare organizations that their shortlist of telemedicine candidates is exactly who they say they are, that their credentials are already verified and that they’re ready to be hired. Having document <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner/resources/the-true-value-of-verification-in-the-telemedicine-industry" target="_blank">verification as a hiring requisite</a> or using a database of qualified candidates is incredibly beneficial to recruiters looking to expedite their hiring process and reducing time to hire and cost of hire. The genuineness of this relationship creates trust for both parties and mitigates professional, identity and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner/resources/diploma-mills-a-concern-for-employers" target="_blank">academic fraud</a> from tainting the telemedicine landscape. <br><br><a href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner/resources/the-rise-of-telemedicine-in-2020" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">As telemedicine continuously evolves</a> to keep up with demand and technology developments, telemedicine organizations need to pay attention to how and who they hire to deliver these vital services. Telemedicine organizations cannot afford to disregard candidate verification solutions or compromise on the quality of their candidates or their workforce delivering this crucial care to the most important stakeholder, the patient.</p>
<p>If you’re planning on hiring new healthcare professionals to provide telemedicine as a service and want to find out how to verify new employees, visit our dedicated <a href="https://www.trueprofile.io/partner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Business Partners</a> area or request your free 7-day trial of <a href="https://lp.trueprofile.io/recruit-medical-staff-free-trial/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TrueProfile.io Recruiting</a> today.</p>