Over the last few years, telemedicine has transformed the way healthcare is delivered, offering new opportunities to improve patient access to care and strengthen the care continuum. Today, we are proud to share that we are making Doximity Dialer Pro available to free medical clinics in the United States at no charge. While we have extended Dialer Pro access to over 1,000 clinicians at 48 free clinics as part of a pilot program, formalizing this program could make Dialer Pro available to over 1,000 free clinics and up to 1.8 million patients nationwide.
Eliminating Barriers and Increasing Patient Access to Care
Patients in under-resourced communities often face significant barriers to care, such as a lack of transportation or primary language fluency. As a result, 64% of free and charitable clinics offer telehealth services and 51% offer translation services for their patients. Still, ensuring equitable access to remote care remains an important health equity challenge, requiring solutions that improve rather than impede patient access.
Dialer Pro features aim to meet the needs of historically marginalized communities and increase more equitable access to telemedicine:
- Language support: Dialer automatically detects the language settings on the patient’s device and adjusts the telehealth visit accordingly. Languages currently supported include English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, French and Vietnamese. Clinicians can also send text messages to their patients in these languages, providing an end-to-end translated experience.
- Group discussions: Patients can easily add a friend or family member to their telehealth call, and clinicians can add as many interpreter lines as necessary to support multi-language clinical visits.
- Audio-only option: Dialer can seamlessly transition between voice and video calls, offering telehealth access to patients without broadband internet and/or a smartphone—common barriers to remote care in under-resourced communities.
“Approximately 60% of the patients we serve speak Spanish or another primary language. Dialer’s ‘Call Merge’ feature allows us to utilize either our remote volunteer interpreters or an interpretation line to aid in our communication with patients. Many of our patients also have limited transportation options, so being able to reach out to them in their homes or on breaks from work sites has helped us facilitate care delivery that wasn't previously possible.”
At Doximity, we believe inclusive product design is integral to advancing health equity. With Dialer for Free Clinics, we aim to support under-resourced communities today, while we continue to build long-term community relationships that will help strengthen our network and digital health products for all.
*To be eligible for our Dialer Pro service at no charge, clinics must provide medical care to patients that is completely (100%) free of charge. Our commercial Dialer Pro and Enterprise services remain available to all clinics, hospitals and health systems that do not fit this definition of a free clinic.
Illustration by Hannah Gambino