Frequently Asked Questions About Telemedicine Jobs

Telemedicine and telehealth allow remote physicians to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients from a distance. In most cases, telemedicine refers to the delivery of remote care facilitated by a hospital or outpatient clinic. This differs from telehealth, which is primarily focuses on direct communication/care between the patient and the doctor without the hospital acting as an intermediary.

Using these services, patients get a diagnosis and treatment from:

• TeleHospitalists that perform rounds and provide on-call coverage
• Specialist consultations

Physicians work in telemedicine for a multitude of reasons, from paying back student loan debts to keeping skills fresh. But here are the most common profiles we see of successful full-time telemedicine physicians:

• Humanitarians who want to help underserved areas who need them most.
• Doctors that need or want to add to their income by working extra shifts on holidays, vacations and weekends.
• Physicians who need a flexible schedule that allows them to provide care while maintaining work-life balance or managing the demands of raising a young family.
• Retirees who have closed their permanent practices but want to continue to work.
• Technology-forward physicians that both see a need for telemedicine and feel comfortable with the cutting-edge tools, like eStethoscopes, that enable remote care.

More and more, physicians are seeing the lifestyle benefits of telehealth. Your skills are in demand. Telemedicine gives you an abundance of available opportunities, but also allows you to be selective about which assignments you take.

Eagle invests in the training and development of new telemedicine providers. With more than a decade of experience providing remote care and nationwide telemedicine, we know that delivering excellent service to our partner hospitals starts with delivering high quality care to their patients.

That’s why we:

• Simplify the transmission of information between the virtual provider and the hospital by working within the hospital’s EMR.
• Train providers on how to communicate with the staff, patients and other remote providers. We call this “webside” manner.
• Organize our providers into small teams to support a few hospitals rather than connect a large number of telemedicine providers to a wide range of hospitals.

Finally, Eagle is mission driven. We aim to:

LEAD THE INDUSTRY through insight and innovation, providing hospitals with the best solutions and tools to optimize patient outcomes.

Maintain a COLLABORATIVE CULTURE that furthers our mission of improving the performance of our partner hospitals, while setting the standard for a constantly evolving industry.

Continue to cultivate partnerships with hospitals large and small, empower them to make a positive impact in their local communities, and strengthen their ability to SERVE THE UNDERSERVED.

We believe that telemedicine is the “great equalizer”.

It brings the specialist to the patient, rather than transporting the patient to the specialist. It can mitigate the effects of the physician shortage and the equally challenging geographic maldistribution of doctors. Thanks to the power of telemedicine, patients can receive expert care, anywhere.

Even before COVID-19 more than 85% of U.S. hospitals were using some form of telemedicine. In 2020 the number of hospitals leveraging virtual care grew significantly.

There are plenty of opportunities for telemedicine work in every kind of facility — big and small, rural and urban, full-time and part-time. With growing demand for physicians, it’s easy to make a full-time career as a telemedicine physician.

In the U.S., the physician shortage will reach an estimated deficit of over 100,000 physicians by the year 2030. Coupled with our aging population and changes in the healthcare system, many facilities are left without adequate coverage, and that will continue to be a problem for years to come. These facilities turn to telemedicine physicians to help fill those gaps.

Telemedicine work requires physicians who have a certain amount of flexibility and willingness to adapt to new systems. Eagle Telemedicine providers use a variety of telemedicine carts to communicate with patients. We also record patient diagnosis and treatment recommendations directly in each hospitals EMR.

If you have experience with more than one EMR, you are ahead of the game. If you don’t… we will train you on the systems required to provide telemedicine at hospitals where you are assigned. Traits of a successful telemedicine physician include:

• Excellent technical and communication skills
• Timeliness for all assignments.
• Ability to remain flexible to new situations.
• Confidence when working with new teams and managers.
• No outstanding claims or lapses in certifications that may make it hard to get licensed in new states.

Before making any hasty career moves, make sure you have a solid understanding of your contract and its terms. It’s a good idea to consult an employment lawyer who has experience working with physician contracting.

Go back to your employment agreement and check for these requirements:

• Advanced notice length or restrictions related to working outside your employers network
• Non-compete clauses
• Tail coverage
• Debt or loan paybacks
• Retirement plan requirements

Have a timeline in mind. It typically takes 3 months or more to be fully credentialed at a facility to provide telemedicine coverage.

Even with high demand for telemedicine jobs, you’ll find there are open jobs in facilities of all kinds throughout the U.S. While you can find a job on your own, it’s often easier to work with a single company that coordinates remote care at multiple hospitals across the country. This helps you feel confident that your workload will remain consistent overtime.

At Eagle, we try to make the process easy. We perform the interviews, in-house credentialing and training. Then, we assign you to a small team of remote providers. This small team approach allows our remote providers to:

• Work more easily within the hospital’s clinical workflow.
• Minimizes the number of EMRs and types of technology you need to learn.
• Enables information sharing between the telemedicine providers on your team and the onsite staff to ensure the highest quality patient care.
• Simplifies and expediates the credentialing and licensing process – Yes, Eagle will help you keep your state licenses up-to-date.

Once you send us a copy of your CV, preferred shifts and general availability, our recruiter will perform an initial interview that includes questions about your education, experience and desired schedule.

This interview is followed by an initial screening of your education and work history. Then, one of our telemedicine providers will speak with you about the requirements for the role and answer your questions about working in telemedicine.

In most cases you will be interviewed by a physician working within the same specialty. After completing the interview process, applicants that are a good fit for telemedicine receive an offer letter from Eagle Telemedicine. Similar to physicians that work locum tenens, most doctors working for Eagle are independent contractors. This allows our telemedicine teams to continue working in private practice or at facilities within their local community.

The final step is completion of the credentialing and licensing process. Eagle physicians are first credentialed by our organization, which includes a review of your education, experience, licenses and any medical malpractice claims or judgements. After this review, each hospital performs their own credentialing. However, we work with many hospitals that perform credentialing by proxy. This enables our physicians to get to work faster with less paperwork.

As a telemedicine physician, you’ll need to fill out a 1099 form. This makes filing taxes a little different than it would be for a physician with a standard W-2.

The best way to tackle taxes is to find a trusted accountant who you can rely on. This person needs to be a certified public accountant, licensed attorney or enrolled agent who can show you a Preparer Tax Identification Number and membership in the National Association of Tax Professionals.

Because you’re not paying income taxes throughout the year, you’ll need to set aside roughly 40% of your income to pay come tax time. You can also submit quarterly estimates to the IRS to help minimize that year-end payment.

The good news is that many of your telemedicine-related expenses such as continued education, equipment, etc. can count as itemized deductions. If you are not working in another position that offers a retirement savings plan, remember to save for retirement as a self-employed physician.