Telemedicine Guide for Pharmacies: Use Cases, Workflows, Platform, Compliance, Kroll Integration

3 years ago

Dear pharmacists, 

A few entrepreneurs are giving inescapable choices to patients with their game-changing healthcare solutions such as telemedicine platforms and medicine delivery apps.

They are even taking this to a new level by combining telemedicine and medicine delivery apps and building a super healthcare platform. 

Due to such a convenient and accessible platform, patients or consumers simply avoid visiting a pharmacy. (You must have already experienced it!) 

Thus, it is urgent than ever to keep up with healthcare entrepreneurs and ever-evolving consumer patterns to survive in the market which you used to dominate or have already been dominating. 

We deal with telemedicine and online pharmacy solutions every day. We can help you to be equipped with the right tools and technologies to retain your customers and attract new customers.  

But let us first help you gain confidence by sharing some of the Canadian pharmacies already running telemedicine programs. 

Our other useful healthcare IT resources:

These Canadian pharmacies already running telemedicine programs 

  • Guardian and IDA 

Guardian and IDA pharmacy is running a telemedicine program with the collaboration of Gotodoctor.ca and Tia Health. 

With this partnership, it allows their consumers to get convenient access to a doctor. Pharmacists can also be in virtual call with the doctor to create the best care plan for patients remotely. 

  • Pharmacy BC 

Pharmacy BC has implemented a telemedicine system with the help of Tia Health and CloudMD. 

Using telemedicine infrastructure, it brings clinical expertise of pharmacists, nurses and physicians under one virtual roof and lets patients receive quality care remotely. 

Pharmacy BC has built ‘Pharmacy Studio’ at its pharmacy stores where trained nursing staff are onsite to provide first-hand support to the patients and let them interact with the physicians via video call. 

  • London Drugs Pharmacy 

London Drugs Pharmacy is providing telemedicine service from its selected stores and online from patients’ homes. Its telemedicine program is powered by Medimap. 

There are many more pharmacies in Canada that have already understood the fact that telemedicine is the future of healthcare and giving medical consultation & drugs from the same place is a new business recipe for pharmacies. 

Moving forward, now let’s discuss different ways pharmacies can use a telemedicine platform to address the exact clinical needs of the patients while securing business. 

Telemedicine for pharmacies: Use cases 

Telemedicine has evolved greatly. It is now not only limited to video calling between patients and providers. 

In fact, it is a 360-degree care solution from symptom checker to appointment booking, medical consultation, ePrescription and medicine delivery. 

A robust telemedicine platform is armed with features that can streamline several complex clinical workflows. 

Be it pharmacies or hospitals or clinics, telemedicine has enough clinical values to offer all! 

Following are 3 major ways pharmacies can use telemedicine. 

1. In-store telemedicine service

Pharmacies can set up floor-standing kiosks with touch screens and keyboard functions where patients can walk in and have a virtual medical consultation with the physicians.    

For patients unable to navigate telemedicine tech, there should be pharmacy staff to help patients book and join virtual medical visits with the physician. 

Pharmacies should also make sure to set up kiosks while keeping privacy at high priority.

In the initial stage, pharmacies don’t require any professional kiosk. An iPad with headphones can work best in most cases. 

Here is its workflow: 

A patient walks into a pharmacy. >> He virtually talks to a physician. >> Physician writes the ePrescription. >> Pharmacy receives a prescription on its Kroll system as it is integrated. >> A pharmacy fills the prescription. >> A patient collects it from the front counter and leaves the pharmacy. 

Outcome: 

A patient receives both medical consultation and medicines from the same place. 

2. Home-based telemedicine 

A pharmacy can allow patients to have a virtual medical consultation with physicians using its telemedicine mobile or web-based solution.  

Here is its workflow:  

Patient books an appointment. >> He has a video call with a physician. >> Physician writes the ePrescription. >> Patient selects doorstep delivery of medicines. >> Pharmacy receives a prescription on its Kroll system. >> Pharmacy fills a prescription and delivers it to the doorstep of a patient. 

Outcome: 

A patient is able to talk to a physician and receive medicines without stepping out of home. 

3. Medication consultation

For pharmacies, it is crucial to offer a good experience to patients by solving all their doubts rapidly and in an engaging way. 

Patients generally have several questions about their medication plan. So, by letting them talk to a pharmacist and get answers to their questions from their smartphone, pharmacy stores can establish a long-term relationship with patients.

With custom referral features integrated into a telemedicine solution for pharmacies, eligible pharmacists can even refer a patient to a doctor for more specialized care.   

Without Kroll integration, telemedicine for pharmacy platform is almost useless 

To leverage a telemedicine platform at its full potential, you must integrate the Kroll pharmacy management solution with your telemedicine platform. 

Our healthcare IT team has discovered that Kroll integration with a telemedicine platform results in almost 80% faster and accurate prescription processing and fulfilment. 

Thus, the result you can achieve with this simple integration is phenomenal. 

You can establish a secure link between your pharmacy management solution and telemedicine solution which allows you to share prescription, drug and patient data seamlessly across platforms. 

This ultimately facilitates you to serve your consumers in a better and well-organized way. 

To know more about Kroll integration, read our dedicated blog. 

A micro-guide to acquire the most suitable telemedicine platform within your budget 

You must have several doubts regarding a telemedicine solution acquisition as you can’t figure out complexities around its technical and compliance aspect. 

So, with the help of our business analysts, we are listing out some useful tips. 

  • Should you build or purchase a telemedicine platform? 

Building a custom telemedicine platform in North America costs more than $70000. 

However, a major benefit of building your own custom platform is that you can be able to address your all unique needs and clinical workflows as a custom platform is built from scratch and dedicatedly for you.   

If you want to only acquire a custom telemedicine platform but have a limited investment cap, we would suggest going for the MVP version of a telemedicine platform. 

An MVP version is equipped with only basic and useful features. Thus, it is very affordable. 

Once you test it in the real market, you can add more features to it and make it a full-fledged platform while keeping the financial risk low. 

And if you want to acquire a full-fledged telemedicine platform with all the features but within your limited budget, a white-label telemedicine solution works best. 

A white-label platform is a ready-to-use platform that you can acquire without any change or after customizing its UI and adding more features. 

A white-label telemedicine platform is a  ‘value-for-money’ IT product as it includes all useful, advanced and nice-to-have features, offers you full ownership and lets you customize it the way you want.  

And most importantly, it does not cost you a bomb. 

  • Should a telemedicine platform be compliant with data privacy laws? 

Yes, a telemedicine platform must be compliant with PIPEDA - a federal-level data privacy law - and privacy laws of the province where you are using that platform for clinical purposes. 

  • What about the medical billing? 

Your telemedicine platform must have a built-in medical billing module. And that module must support three types of medical billing. 

First is OHIP/AHCIP/MSP billing. The second is private insurance billing and the last is billing for uninsured patients. 

For OHIP/AHCIP/MSP billing, you have to integrate a billing service provider such as Dr. Bill with a telemedicine platform to let providers claim reimbursement from MOH directly from the platform itself. 

For private insurance billing, you have to integrate Telus eClaims to let providers submit claims to private insurance companies directly from a telemedicine platform itself.

And for billing uninsured patients, you have to integrate payment API such as PayPal or Stripe to let uninsured patients make payment using credit/debit cards. 

Don’t overburden yourself. We can offer you peace of mind with our telemedicine tech, business & compliance expertise 

We are an Ontario-based healthcare-focused IT company - have been dealing with telemedicine tech, compliance and business for 7 years. 

With our healthcare developers, designers, business experts and compliance specialists, we are resourceful enough to build the best telemedicine solution for pharmacies Canadians have never used before. 

We also have expertise with Kroll integration and EMR/EHR integration. 

The reason, why we are always able to deliver success to our healthcare clients, is our on-ground knowledge of the Canadian healthcare system, clinical terms, protocols, billing structure and compliance requirements. 

We strongly believe that we do not deliver any healthcare solution to our clients. We instead deliver peace of mind by solving all their telemedicine technical, business and compliance challenges.

In addition to custom and MVP development of a telemedicine platform, we also offer a HIPAA/PHIPA/PIPEDA compliant white-label telemedicine solution. 

It is developed by Canadian local developers for Canadian healthcare providers to solve their specific clinical and administrative challenges. 

Following are its real screenshots. We also provide its live demo in case you want to see the future of healthcare in real, in action!