A smooth telehealth visit doesn’t happen by accident. The physicians who make the most of virtual care, for themselves and their patients, put care and thought into the setup before the visit begins. The tools, environment, AI support, and the post-call workflow all shape the encounter in ways that compound over many visits.
This article guides clinicians through five practical steps to prepare for an effective telemedicine visit, from AI-powered tools, customization, and the final sign-off.
5 Ways Physicians and Clinicians Can Prepare for a Telehealth Visit
1. Ensure All Digital Tools Are HIPAA Compliant
Before anything else, the foundation of a great telehealth call is knowing every digital tool involved meets HIPAA standards. This means the platform hosting any call, video call, or text messaging functionality, the documentation software, the scribe, and everything else used before, during, or after need to operate within a compliant framework.
This step is always worth taking seriously, even if a clinician assumes their institution has it handled. Many clinicians gravitate toward their personal devices, or open, public-facing AI tools that fall outside common compliance agreements. The cleanest solution, then, is to choose a single platform that supports the same functionality under one HIPAA-compliant roof.
2. Set Up an AI-Powered Scribe
Documentation is one of the most significant sources of friction in telehealth, causing many clinicians to work overtime and burn themselves out with administrative to-dos. Setting up an AI-powered scribe before a visit is one of the highest-return preparations a physician can make.
Ambient scribes listen to a clinical encounter as it unfolds and generate a structured note once the visit is complete. No need for the attending clinician to type or dictate during the visit, or spend extra time charting afterward. Before going live, clinicians should:
- Choose a quiet room to record in, where they cannot be overheard
- Check that the audio input is capturing clearly
- Ensure they’ve met any consent requirements for their jurisdiction
For residents and high-volume physicians managing back-to-back calls, an AI-powered scribe can meaningfully streamline the clinical workflow, giving time back that a regular practice rarely leaves room for.
3. Choose an AI Decision-Support Tool
Having an AI decision-support tool integrated in a telehealth workflow gives physicians fast access to evidence-based literature, drug monograph data, and clinical guidelines at the exact moment they need them: during the encounter, and not afterward.
To streamline a clinical decision support workflow, it’s key that the tool runs on the same software as the telehealth software. If a clinician is required to log in to a new platform and learn to operate it alongside a telehealth platform, the visit becomes disjointed, and the clinician could become distracted.
Physicians should also consider their specialty when selecting a decision support tool. A hospitalist managing complex inpatient follow-ups may choose different software than a primary care physician managing routine disease check-ins. The best AI tools also allow some degree of customization to ensure reliable performance during each visit.
4. Customize Your AI to Your Specialty or Preferences
The most capable AI tools for healthcare are not always one-size-fits-all, and taking time before implementation to configure the tool to the right clinical context is important. Customization could be simple, like:
- Adjusting note templates to match the format of your specialty or practice
- Setting preferred documentation styles
- Saving and re-using common medical prompts and projects
Physicians who take these steps often find that the AI-generated outputs require less editing, feel closer to how they might write them manually, and integrate naturally into their workflow.
For resident doctors still developing their clinical style, customization is also a valuable learning exercise. Understanding what a complete, specialty- or practice-appropriate note looks like and configuring the AI to produce it correctly reinforces documentation standards they can carry out for the rest of their career.
5. Review AI Summaries and Outputs Before Signing Off
One of the most important steps happens after the visit ends. As current AI technology stands, any AI-powered tool is capable of hallucinating or providing inaccurate information. AI-generated notes, summaries, and drafts should always be treated as starting points, and not finished clinical records. Before signing off on any AI output, the clinician should read it carefully, verify that the content accurately reflects the encounter, correct any errors, and add any necessary clinical nuance.
This step matters for patient safety as much as it does for compliance. An AI-scribe that mishears could produce a note that could impact downstream care if it isn’t reviewed. A physician’s clinical judgment always comes first, and their signature on a clinical record is a statement of clinical accountability.
Doximity: Each Step, in One Place
Doximity and telehealth platform Doximity Dialer support each step in this checklist with a single clinical AI suite. The platform is HIPAA-compliant by design and supports calls, messaging, video calls, and even HIPAA-compliant faxing on a single platform. Dialer also protects physician phone numbers during a telehealth call, meaning physician privacy are always top of mind.
The AI-powered Doximity Scribe live-records appointments in person and over Dialer, and generates a structured, customizable note before discarding the original recording. Doximity Ask, the clinical decision management platform, enables prompt-and-response queries, document drafting, drug monograph data, surfacing clinical evidence, and more to support clinicians across specialties. Doximity’s platform is also available on mobile and desktop platforms for convenient access on the go.
Adequate preparation for a telehealth visit is ultimately about reducing variables that can affect the quality of care. Doximity handles the infrastructure, so the clinician can focus on the medicine.
Get Doximity for Free Today
Doximity Dialer, Scribe, and Ask are available for physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs. Over 85% of U.S. physicians are already registered Doximity members, and joining is free.
Sign up with your valid healthcare credentials and start using safe, effective digital tools for your practice today.