Healthcare in 2024 is changing rapidly, and telemedicine is leading that change. As a marketer, it is all the more critical to capture relevant data for better patient registration, patient onboarding, and, eventually, patient release.

Old-fashioned patient intake forms aren't little help in telemedicine services because they are better suited to a physical visit to the healthcare service provider.

What can be done now that there’s telehealth and telemedicine? Time to first know the basics.

Telehealth vs Telemedicine: What's the Difference?

Telehealth means healthcare-provided telecommunications technology. On the other hand, telemedicine is a subset of telehealth, which refers to the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients via any form of telecommunications medium - video calls monitoring patients’ vitals and so on. At the same time, telehealth services are a superset and include other facets like medical education, patient awareness, admin meetings in a hospital, and so on.

How to Use Forms for Telemedicine Services?

Since digital forms are a cost-effective and fast way of collecting data, they’re a go-to in telemedicine. But the catch here is to make forms to prevent drop-offs, lead to higher conversion rates, and gather as much data as possible. Contrary to this is how modern forms are embedded on hospital websites - boring, dull, tedious, and unrewarding. We’ll get to that later. Before that, let’s look at the data that a telemedicine form captures. It is time first to know what data points are there in a telemedicine form.

What Is a Great Telemedicine Form Like?

A great telemedicine form will have the following components:

1. Patient & Insurance Information:

This part includes data points that are precursors to medical history forms.

• Basic details: Name, date of birth, contact details and email.

• Insurance: Details of the insurance carrier, the policy number, and the type of insurance taken (mediclaim, cashless, reimbursable, corporate)?

• Emergency contact details: Name, email, and address of a relative or close friend who could be of help when needed.

2. Appointment Details:

This is similar to the medical history forms used in telemedicine and healthcare services.

• Reason for visit: Pre-set options or fill-in-the-blank to know if this is the patient’s first visit, continuing treatment, or follow-up with a physician.

• Medical history: A summary of pre-existing conditions, medications, and allergies.

• Current symptoms: Specific prompts according to the reason for the visit, with fill-in-the-blank for more details

3. Consent & Policies:

Useful in telemedicine consent forms and telemedicine release forms.

• Telehealth consent: A simple explanation of risks and benefits of online consultations

• HIPAA authorization: Seek permission to share medical info electronically and tell the patient where, when, and to what extent their information records can be shared.

• Payment policies: Online payment options and clear instructions for payments to be made later at the end of the form when the patient is booking an appointment.

4. Extra Info:

Depending on the specialist seen and the reason for the visit, more info might be needed, including:

• Vital signs measurements (like blood pressure and body temperature) to know how healthy the patient currently is

• Medication adherence data to know for how long a patient has been following prescription drugs (and of what kind - opioids, analgesics etc) and avoiding allergens.

• Lifestyle habits and stress levels to better personalize the patient’s treatment for their age, gender, and nature of work.

Form Hacks: Three Useful Tips.

After knowing what to ask, we’ll not look at “how” to ask. The primary thing to remember is to ask what needs to be known for the consultation and avoid asking irrelevant stuff. To know how to have higher conversion rates in a form, read more here in our blog on best practices for higher conversion rates in a form. To give you a glimpse:

1. Ask questions that matter for the user case of the form: asking for income in the contact sales form might be redundant unless you’re optimizing for high-net-worth individuals.

2. Switch to AI bots when possible to compare the completion rates of a bot vs. a form. Connects to the broader point of constant experimentation (see below).

3. Have an intuitive form builder that lets you do A/B tests (on visuals, question sequence, gamification) to determine the best way to capture maximum data from relevant leads.

Which Is the Best Telemedicine Form Builder?

You now know the best practices for telemedicine forms and the data points necessary to capture. It is time to move on to the platforms to build forms besides the typical Google forms that can’t accommodate complexity.

• JotForm: JotForm has pre-made telehealth and telemedicine templates and offers easy 100+ integrations with telemedicine technologies, including hospital CRMs and PayPal, to collect payment. In the JotForm enterprise version, HIPPA forms specifically cater to telemedicine services companies. It is not a niche healthcare provider, but it gets the job done with its features.

  
  

• HotHealth: A form-building platform built specifically for healthcare forms, it comes with HIPAA compliance and has features that adapt the form based on patient responses. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder, but adding conditions or logic is not visual like you might have in Typeform.

  
  

• FormDr: Once again, a HIPPA-compliant niche form company that offers a range of forms, including medical intake forms, patient onboarding forms, and medical release forms. Besides forms, it offers features like SMS or Email invites and a QR code scan to start the form. It is good to optimize for the top of the funnel but not inherently an A/B testing platform like WorkHack.

  
  

• 123FormBuilder: A user-friendly interface that is good for lead capture on websites and patient health surveys and affordable pricing for small businesses. No code option that can help create lead-capture telemedicine forms and patient satisfaction surveys. Two useful features are the ability to pick answers from a previous question if the user has already answered in some way and to create invoices and other docs based on the data collected to later connect with the user.

  
  

• Digital Intakes: Primarily focussed on patient intake forms. This platform works well with telemedicine platforms like Zoom and Doxy.me, which makes data exchange more efficient. Affordable, unlimited submissions in the paid plan, connects with the healthcare services provider's CRM software and is easy to use. Nothing is exceptional, but a good bang for the buck, considering it is way cheaper than enterprise Jotform.

  
  

Telemedicine Forms: Next Steps to Take.

The takeaway is to choose a platform that works well with your specific needs and budget. Ensure it is HIPAA compliant and see how many and which kind of integrations are available (CRM, G-Suite, Workflow, etc).

At the end of the day, it is not about lead capture and higher conversion rates but about patient-centric telemedicine services. With that KPI in mind, choose the form builder that best suits your goals - visual appeal, quicker experimentation, complex flow building, or easy integrations.

In the data collection and forms world, if you’ve not seen the buzz around Formless Forms by Typeform Labs, check it out. An AI form builder that is making data collection via conversations in 2024.