Day in the life of
Director of Telehealth – Mitchell Fong, MPH, EMBA
My Typical Day
A typical day in my role as Director of Telehealth is focused on ensuring the services go smooth for the day, planning for the future, and attending meetings to continue to develop strategy and refine programs. Typically, my day starts with a huddle with my team to understand any challenges, barriers, or information for the team. This can be with my direct telehealth operations team or may include the scheduling, referrals, IT, or clinical teams depending on the day and topics that need to be discussed, but the focus of this is to ensure the scheduled appointments for the day run smoothly.
From there, the day is based on the various meetings already scheduled or urgent issues that need to be addressed. The key responsibilities are to ensure we remain compliant, patient and provider experience and expectations are met or exceeded, and planning short term and long term strategies. A focus on data-driven decision making is critical to ensure appropriate decisions are made.
I try to carve out time to focus on both short term and long term goals daily and align meetings in an appropriate fashion to ensure we are always looking at the current and future success. One of the most important metrics for success in telehealth is ensuring your partners are informed and spending time to create and expand on personal relationships with partner sites. I make it a point to visit all my partner locations at least annually, no matter how far out they are so I can understand the challenges from their perspective and strengthen our collaborative relationship. Taking time to receive honest feedback and ensuring there is a focus on the feedback loop and responding to the communities’ needs is very important, as every community is different. I find it valuable to find time to reflect on the conversations and opportunities to improve daily, weekly, and monthly to ensure you are creating the optimal program, always putting the patient at the center! This can be programmatic, leadership, communication, or any other opportunity, but finding time to reflect and develop improvement goals consistently is important for sustained success.
Pros
The opportunity to be creative and collaborate with various stakeholders is very fulfilling. I take pride in finding opportunities to align strategies across different organizations to achieve a common goal of creating access for quality care for all communities. Having the chance to travel to these various locations and meet with leaders from different backgrounds allows me to broaden my perspective and learn more about the challenges from a different lens. This ultimately allows me to better understand my partners and the communities I serve to develop strategies that are the best fit for the community. Being an expert in an area that many others are just becoming familiar with is an exciting part of my job!
Cons
Because every day is different and every community has different needs, the job may seem overwhelming at times because you want to have an answer for all, but also need to create consistency across the program for success. Providers are not always understanding of the various challenges that rural communities face with staffing, funding, technology, broadband, and various other issues so managing the expectations can be difficult. Additionally, aligning organizations with different goals and strategies for a common goal can be a taxing and at times politically demanding responsibility to navigate those discussions appropriately. Spending time on the road traveling to rural locations can use a lot of time, and many of the times we are traveling through communities with limited or no service, making it difficult to effectively work while traveling. This can cause a burden when trying to manage time, workload, and stress.
Overall, the opportunity to help address care gaps for many patients in various communities is a huge benefit that outweighs all the challenges for me. Knowing the services provided can change a patient’s life and help keep them healthy, happy, and living their best life is the ultimate satisfaction that an administrator can find in this role. Implementing new technology and creating opportunities that never existed is challenging worth sacrificing for!
