Social media can serve as a community for people experiencing similar emotions. It is helping break down the stigma of mental health, but keep in mind, it’s not a replacement for treatment. If you are struggling with your mental health, please take care of yourself and find a trusted professional.

Jessica Clemons

MD, Board-Certified Psychiatrist – recently recognized by Forbes as a leader in making mental health and wellness a part of the current zeitgeist, and runs a #BeWell conversational series

Dr. Colleen Reichmann

Entrepreneur, Clinical psychologist, author, and IVF mama. On her social media, she talks about body image, motherhood, feminism, eating disorders, and more

Dr. Mariel Buqué

Therapist, Columbia University Ph.D. and Professor – a holistic psychologist with expertise in intergenerational trauma and meditation healing

Dr. Leah Katz

Clinical Psychologist, Writer at Psychology Today, author of Gutsy, a book about getting “unstuck” from society’s unrealistic and often harmful expectations for women

Dr. Alia Ahmed

BSc DRCOG MRCP, Consultant Dermatologist, Psychodermatology – “where MIND meets SKIN”

Jake Goodman

MD, MBA, Resident Physician – Psychiatry. Mental health activist, TEDx Speaker and Writer

Micheline Maalouf

LMHC, Psychotherapist and Educator, Arab American, founder of Serein Counseling offering virtual and in-person care in childhood trauma, life coaching, anxiety and more

Dr Faye Begeti

NHS neurology doctor and neuroscientist, Medical degree and PhD, Cambridge

Dr. Michaela

Psychologist who speaks to “Sensitive, ambitious woman with imposter syndrome, anxiety, and struggling with work-life balance.” Author of You’ve Got This

Joanna Konstantopoulou

Health Psychologist, Founder of Health Psychology Clinic, Media Contributor for Cosmopolitan UK, Daily Mail, Psychologies Magazine and Glamour UK

The post 10 Mental Health Influencers to Follow this Month appeared first on Doxy.me.

The pandemic put the healthcare industry through one of the biggest hurdles we’ve seen. From providers having to make an overnight transition to virtual care, learning and adapting to new protocols, and treating an influx of Covid-19 patients, the pandemic brought awareness to many flaws in the healthcare system. These flaws showcased the importance of adopting health technology and the opportunities created by extending care to more patients.

For the providers combating America’s deadliest disease, there are many benefits of engaging in telecardiology. However, embracing technology is not always for the faint of heart. Meet some of the country’s top clinics who have risen to the challenge:

1. 1. Heart Care at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute – Charlotte, North Carolina
2. 2. Oklahoma Heart Institute – Tulsa, Oklahoma
3. 3. Seton Heart Institute – Austin, Texas
4. 4. Valley Heart Institute – Modesto, California
5. 5. Temecula Valley Cardiology – Temecula Valley, California
6. 6. North Ohio Heart Center – Northern Ohio counties
7. 7. Cary Cardiology – Cary, North Carolina
8. 8. Colorado Springs Cardiologists – Colorado Springs, Colorado
9. 9. Cardiovascular Medicine, PC – Davenport, Iowa and Moline, Illinois
10. 10. Pima Heart and Vascular – Southeastern Arizona

The post The Top 10 U.S. Cardiovascular Clinics Using Doxy.me Telemedicine appeared first on Doxy.me.

We believe that Heroes of Doxy.me is a very important project, and there are a number of goals we hope to accomplish. But first, we should explain why we loved the people of Ukraine long before this war began.

What is Ukraine to doxy.me? 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit American shores in March 2020, doxy.me grew at an insanely fast rate. It was impossible for the small team of employees to keep up with the flood of new users. That’s when Heath Morrison—our current CTO, and an American who had lived in Ukraine for many years—suggested expanding into the Ukrainian talent pool. 

When the world most needed telemedicine to grow and adapt to solve its healthcare needs, the people of Ukraine answered the call. We hired software engineers, project managers, support specialists; Ukrainians were involved in every part of the company. They made it possible for hundreds of thousands of providers to join doxy.me in the matter of only a few short months—sometimes tens of thousands a day. Without them, millions of patients would have been left with no safe way to see their providers. The people of Ukraine have done so much for us: that’s why we want to do everything we can to give back to them. 

Spread truth and bolster support

These stories are real. In them you will find struggle and hope. The will of the Ukrainian people is an amazing thing. We American workers have witnessed it firsthand in every interaction with our colleagues. We want to show the rest of the world just how special and resilient the people of Ukraine are.

Our Ukrainian friends have had to hunker down in bomb shelters and subway stations; have had to split families as they crossed borders; have been held at gunpoint by Russian soldiers. They have gone through so much—that’s why we plan on doing more than just sharing these stories with the world. 

Charity effort

Heroes of Doxy.me is a charity effort for the people of Ukraine. All proceeds from sales of our “We Stand with Ukraine” t-shirts, available in the doxy.me store, go to charitable causes and organizations hand-selected by our Ukrainian colleagues. We believe it is not the role of outsiders to decide what is best for the people of Ukraine, so we have listened to their wishes. Additionally, any charitable donation made by a doxy.me employee will be matched by the company. 

The people of Ukraine supported doxy.me, and by extension, hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers around the world. It is our time to give back to them. 

The post What is Heroes of Doxy.me?  appeared first on Doxy.me.

Here are the latest updates and trends you don’t want to miss:

1. 1. A survey conducted by the American Medical Association found that the vast majority of physician respondents say they’re currently using telehealth: AMA survey: Majority of physicians say telehealth enables more comprehensive quality care
3. 2. Telehealth Growing Pains: Patient advocates, public health officials and telehealth and provider groups are pushing for a fix, but they’re not on the same page despite sharing similar goals.
5. 3. Researchers found that publicly insured pediatric patients who used telehealth less frequently lived in rural areas with lower family incomes: Disparities Common in Telehealth Use Among Pediatric CHIP Patients
7. 4. The Telehealth Era Is Just Beginning: If 30% to 40% of in-person specialist visits in the U.S. were replaced by telehealth consults, tens of billions of dollars annually would be saved
9. 5. Collectively, these clinics have conducted over 600,000 virtual appointments: Top Pediatric Clinics Using Doxy.me Telehealth
11. 6. 14 states join forces to replenish healthcare workforce: “Every state is facing health workforce challenges, and the pandemic has revealed how quickly the challenge can become a crisis when the system is strained — especially for rural communities.”
13. 7. “When the world most needed telemedicine to grow and adapt to solve its healthcare needs, the people of Ukraine answered the call.”: Doxy.me launches Heroes of Doxy.me to support Ukraine
15. 8. A third of U.S. hospitals use Epic, report finds: Epic Systems added more U.S. hospitals to its electronic health records software footprint than its competitors last year

The post The Healthcare News Roundup appeared first on Doxy.me.

At the start of the invasion, doxy.me had nearly 50 staff members based in Ukraine. The  “Heroes of Doxy.me” miniseries documents their harrowing, inspiring, and at times shocking experiences. Their stories include:

• A mother forced to leave her husband and oldest son behind as she fled to Poland.
• A HR manager who chose to stay in Ukraine and volunteer at a humanitarian distribution center.
• A young woman who spent nights huddled in Kyiv subways while air raid sirens filled the air. 
• A developer who stepped away from the computer to serve in the Ukrainian armed forces. 

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, doxy.me experienced unprecedented growth ballooning to over 1 million providers on the platform. To meet the extraordinary demand, the company rapidly expanded the team in Ukraine. “The Ukrainians were there to get us through the COVID-19 surge, we now have an obligation to get them through this war,” says Brandon M. Welch, MS, PhD, founder and CEO of doxy.me.

After visiting the team in Lviv, Ukraine in March, Welch was deeply inspired by the resilience, strength, and courage of the Ukrainian teammates. “I felt we needed to help them share their stories on a wider scale,” says Welch.

Prior to the invasion, doxy.me prepared an emergency action plan for its Ukrainian staff: a plan which provided a safe house in Lviv, covered relocation expenses, guaranteed their jobs, provided counseling, and more. Doxy.me is happy to report that all members are accounted for and safe. 

We invite everyone to listen to their stories and buy a “We Stand with Ukraine” t-shirt. 100% of the proceeds go to local charitable organizations in Ukraine selected by team members located there.  

About doxy.me

Founded in 2014, doxy.me is the largest HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform in the US with more than 1 million healthcare providers who collectively saw more than 90,000,000 patients in 2021. Doxy.me’s approximately 150 team members are primarily located in Charleston, SC; Salt Lake City, UT; Rochester, NY; Western Europe and Ukraine.

The post US health tech company launches podcast mini-series to highlight inspiring stories from their team members in Ukraine appeared first on Doxy.me.

Government funds help schools

During the pandemic the Federal government created more grants and set aside more money for telehealth programs. For example, in February of 2022 the University of Mississippi Medical Center received a $17.6 million grant from the State Department of Education to provide more of the state’s students access to Telehealth.

This initial money came from the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. Then in March of 2022 the Rescue Plan opened $122 billion of funds for school districts to use in both tech-based and non-tech ways.  

Telehealth helps in rural areas

Studies conducted before the pandemic showed that children in rural areas already lacked healthcare opportunities compared to their urban peers. According to this article, secondary-school age kids in small rural areas were more often overweight  (41.6%) when compared with urban kids (29.7%). Before the pandemic, children in rural areas had less access to preventative care (71.4%) than urban kids (75.8%). Also, rural kids had less access to preventative dental care (74.0%) compared to urban children (80.2%).

On the other hand, children in rural areas more often had 60 minutes of daily physical activity (25.8%), the recommended amount for health, compared to urban children (18.9%).

The Mississippi grant will give K-12 kids more access to healthcare during school hours through a telehealth delivery system, including urgent care and behavioral health care. The grant will also increase accessibility to healthcare for students in rural areas.

What can you do?

Providers can work with school administrators to create community groups tasked with starting healthcare programs in rural areas. Your efforts can help create a great public-private partnership by working with local philanthropic groups that are interested in providing healthcare to kids in rural areas, especially mental health care. You can use this link to find a foundation in your area.

The post New Opportunities for Telehealth Providers to Help Rural Schools appeared first on Doxy.me.

With the rise of pediatric telehealth usage across the U.S., doxy.me took a dive into the data to pull the top pediatric clinics using our HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform across the country. Collectively, these clinics have conducted over 600,000 virtual appointments. 

• Broadlands Family Practice
• Family & Children’s Services
• Valley Children’s Healthcare
• Sweetgrass Pediatrics
• Children’s Medical Centers of Fresno
• Annapolis Pediatrics
• White’s Pediatrics
• Pediatric & Family Behavioral Health, PLLC

Telehealth usage in pediatrics has increased in recent years, particularly in speciality treatments such as mental health therapy, diabetes management, and neurodevelopment. Pediatricians often use telehealth solutions to reach children in rural areas and in areas where travel is a hardship. Some families have special, sensitive medical devices in their homes so doctors can check in on their child’s vital signs via the internet.

Telemedicine and pediatrics are a good team—doctors who need to see kids would do well to make solutions like doxy.me a part of their office workflow.

The post Top Pediatric Clinics Using Doxy.me Telehealth appeared first on Doxy.me.

The best ways to customize your online waiting room

The doxy.me customizable waiting room feature is very versatile, so I wanted to talk about a few different ways to take full advantage of its capabilities. 

Bio

A provider bio is one of the most popular choices. Simply include a picture and information about yourself. While a bio may make introductions easier, it also has the added benefit of showing your patient that they’re in the right place. If you want to take it up a notch, you can even create a video that introduces yourself (just note that the video must be posted on YouTube or Vimeo).

Pre-session tasks

Would your telehealth sessions run smoother if you had your clients perform some pre-session tasks? Here are some examples:

• Do you have forms that need to be filled out? Include a link to an online form with some text instructions on your page, or connect with dokbot to automate patient intake and data collection.
• Explain what the session will involve so clients can prepare properly, including grabbing equipment, changing clothes, etc.
• Instruct your clients to perform a connection test using doxybot. This will prepare them for the technical aspects of the telemedicine call. 
• Perhaps you’re a mental healthcare provider, and you like your clients to perform a guided meditation before the session. You can put a video right in your waiting room. 

And there could be hundreds of other discipline-specific examples too. Just remind your clients to show up early enough to finish these tasks before the call starts.

Create a relaxing environment

A relaxing environment can improve patient outcomes in hospital settings. So why not make your waiting room a place where your clients can relax and decompress? By adding a YouTube video, you can play music or share ambient nature scenes with your patients before a call. 

Education

The waiting room is a perfect place to teach. Much like many brick-and-mortar offices hang posters and The waiting room is a perfect place to teach. Like the posters and diagrams hanging on the walls in brick-and-mortar offices, you can inform clients about the common ailments in your field. Here are just a few examples:

• Sleep doctors can include information about sleep apnea 
• Endocrinologists can include information on diabetes 
• Orthopedists can describe common joint injuries

And it doesn’t have to be educational in these same ways, either. You could inform them about what your field of study is, common reasons to see a provider like you, or even what the capital of Assyria was. The waiting room is your place to share anything.

Your waiting room could look like this too.

Benefits to editing your online waiting room

What benefits will you gain from a well-constructed waiting room? 

• Confident clients
• Informed patients
• More time, less effort

So what are you waiting for? Log in to your account and get started on your perfect online waiting room today.

The post How to Optimize Your Online Waiting Room appeared first on Doxy.me.

Providers who have embraced telemedicine recognize that how they see patients has fundamentally changed. Pediatricians are also adjusting to this technique. How can pediatricians and other providers who work with children take advantage of telehealth to help the kids they see?

What are some limitations?

Pediatricians have found that telehealth solutions face the same limitations as regular care, with these added worries:

• Inherent limitations of the technology, including network speed and availability
• Whether patients and parents feel comfortable using virtual care
• Your office’s ability to set up new workflows around telehealth
• Bandwidth is insufficient in many areas for a good telehealth experience

Also, while digital instruments are making headway in many situations, it’s still rare to find patients with digital stethoscopes or otoscopes in their home. Of course, if you’re seeing a patient frequently for conditions that require sensitive instruments, you probably have made arrangements to make their telehealth care more effective.

Surprisingly, cost is not a serious limitation. Some solutions can work on any device, such as desktop PCs and mobile devices. Those are almost certainly part of your healthcare arsenal already. And doxy.me is famously free to use for any provider and super easy to implement.

What are some benefits?

As telehealth becomes easier to find, some benefits have become obvious. Here are some examples:

• Increased care opportunities for rural patients
• Convenience of routine exams for colds and viruses or medicine management
• Popular solution for mental health treatment
• Minimizes contagion transmission
• Helpful for specific conditions such as dermatology and cardiology

In 2017, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advised that a pediatrician’s office was the best place for a child’s medical care. However, the pandemic made it possible to receive excellent care through the internet. 

Because of the pandemic, the growth and evolution of telehealth were accelerated. Government regulations and policies that once limited the effectiveness of telemedicine were pushed aside as the nation dealt with the emergency. However, some of those exceptions are expiring. 

We’ll see how insurance companies work with providers and telehealth. In the meantime, providers, including pediatricians, will continue to find new ways to employ telehealth for the good of the patients they care for.

If you’re reading this and you haven’t investigated telehealth for your pediatric practice, sign up for doxy.me today. It’s free, and it will help you move into the future of healthcare.

The post How Does Telehealth Mix With Pediatrics? appeared first on Doxy.me.

Here are the latest updates and trends you don’t want to miss:

1. 1. A milestone is made that “signals a new era of healthcare: one that focuses on convenience, ease, and a patient-first mentality.”: Teladoc partners with Amazon to bring virtual visits through Alexa. 

2. 2. Providers are pushing Congress to continue to allow opioid addiction prescriptions to be offered through telehealth beyond the pandemic. “…loosening the rules helped eliminate longstanding barriers to addiction care, like a lack of transportation or a shortage of clinicians who prescribe medically assisted treatment, especially in rural communities.”

3. 3. Virtual Reality continues to make headway in all areas of healthcare: “The potential advantages of VR for clinicians are tremendous, and only the limits of our imagination restrict the possibilities.” 

4. 4. Cybercriminals are hacking patients through at-home healthcare monitoring. Here’s what you need to know and how to keep your organization and patients protected: Is remote patient monitoring the new cybercrime target?

5. 5. 1 in 3 mental health care visits are being conducted via telehealth, two years-post the height of the pandemic: Why telementalhealth continues to account for 36% of all visits

6. 6. The ‘Break into the Boardroom’ program placed 50+ women on healthcare boards: “​​Currently, only 14 percent of corporate board seats at publicly held life science companies are held by women.”

The post The Healthcare News Roundup appeared first on Doxy.me.