Secure Telehealth Scheduling Portal for a Rural Primary Care Practice

Overview

Built a telehealth scheduling portal for a rural primary care practice serving patients who often drive long distances for in-person visits. The portal lets patients book video visits directly, complete with an automated pre-visit checklist confirming they have a working camera and stable connection ahead of time. This reduced a common failure point the practice had run into with telehealth: patients booking a slot and then the visit falling apart due to last-minute technical issues. The portal integrates with the practice's existing scheduling system so telehealth and in-person visits live in one calendar, not two separate ones. A rural primary care practice's telehealth visits frequently fell apart at the last minute due to patients' camera or connectivity issues discovered only once the visit had already started. We built a telehealth scheduling portal with an automated pre-visit checklist confirming camera and connection readiness ahead of time, unified with in-person scheduling so the practice manages one calendar instead of two. We interviewed front-desk and clinical staff about exactly how past telehealth visits had failed before designing the readiness checklist to target those specific failure points. The portal was piloted with a subset of patients over several weeks, tracking failure rates before and after, ahead of a practice-wide rollout. Telehealth technical failures dropped as connectivity and camera issues are now caught before the visit instead of during it, protecting provider time and making telehealth a more reliable option for patients who'd otherwise drive long distances.