Frequently Asked Questions
VideoConsults by HealthOcta is a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform that solves a critical bottleneck in healthcare: timely access to subspecialist expertise in settings where it typically doesn't exist. Designed for frontline environments like emergency rooms, urgent care clinics, assisted living facilities, ACOs, and rural hospitals, the platform integrates portable diagnostic tools with real-time remote collaboration. Local clinical staff—using devices that require minimal training—can capture images and vitals, which are immediately routed to offsite subspecialists for review.
The value is speed, precision, and reach. A patient presenting with a complex condition no longer has to be transferred just because the right expert isn't in the building. Instead, a cardiologist, neurologist, or ophthalmologist can weigh in from hundreds of miles away—often within minutes. That input helps frontline teams make faster, more accurate decisions, reducing delays and improving outcomes without burdening the facility with additional onsite staff.
VideoConsults extends the diagnostic and decision-making power of small or under-resourced settings by acting as the connective tissue between frontline care and a broader network of expertise. In a healthcare system strained by staffing shortages and logistical friction, it’s a practical way to scale high-quality care across geography, infrastructure, and time.
In contrast, VideoConsults provides specialists with a structured, specialty-specific intake workflow that includes comprehensive patient history, current symptoms, prior treatments, integrated diagnostics, and clinical-grade device data where applicable, such as dermatology images, ophthalmology scans, or cardiology telemetry. Specialists also have access to patient vitals and other relevant bedside metrics. The platform’s workflow ensures consults are routed to the right specialist, either asynchronously or in real time.
By delivering richer, organized, and tailored information, VideoConsults enables faster, more accurate clinical decisions, reduces the need for follow-up clarifications, and improves patient outcomes compared to standard EMR-based consult requests.
VideoConsults is designed specifically for provider-to-provider consults, connecting facilities such as hospitals, micro-hospitals, ALFs, SNFs, LTCs, FQHCs, and other care settings with vetted specialists to make timely, informed clinical decisions. This approach helps reduce unnecessary transfers, ensures access to specialty expertise, and supports efficient, high-quality care within the facility.
For patient-facing consults, eClinic by HealthOcta enables direct access to specialists. These consults are often cash-pay and are commonly used for second opinions or advisory purposes, providing patients with guidance while complementing the provider-to-provider model of VideoConsults.
For patient-facing consults, eClinic by HealthOcta enables direct access to specialists. These consults are often cash-pay and are commonly used for second opinions or advisory purposes, providing patients with guidance while complementing the provider-to-provider model of VideoConsults.
VideoConsults can help you expand your specialty practice by giving you access to patients and hospitals beyond your immediate geography, without needing to open satellite clinics. The VideoConsults platform connects you with hospitals, ERs, urgent cares, and patients who lack access to your subspecialty, creating new referral streams. By Being associated with HealthOcta's platforms, you can generate additional revenue both from direct patient consults, such as second opinions or follow-ups through eClinics by HealthOcta and from professional-to-professional consults using VideoConsults when other physicians and institutions need your expertise.
eClinics by HealthOcta also improves practice efficiency by letting you manage routine visits or lower-acuity cases virtually, freeing up your in-person clinic for higher-value care. Over time, being listed on the HealthOcta platform builds your visibility and reputation nationally, positioning you as a go-to specialist while future-proofing your practice as healthcare shifts toward hybrid and tele-enabled models.
Yes, VideoConsults can absolutely be used as an internal fabric across your hospital system. This means one location can directly tap into the specialists at another location through the platform. For example, if a smaller facility doesn’t have neurology coverage, they can route a consult request to your neurologist sitting at a larger hospital within your own system.
The benefit of this model is that it allows you to maximize the use of your own specialists first before looking outside the network. It reduces unnecessary patient transfers, since smaller hospitals can access expertise remotely and only transfer patients when it’s truly needed. It also strengthens cohesion across your system by creating a unified specialty coverage network, where all hospitals operate on the same structured intake and diagnostic workflow. This improves efficiency and reduces costs, since you don’t have to maintain duplicate on-call contracts at every site while still ensuring reliable coverage across the system
VideoConsults reduces costs and increases revenue for hospitals by optimizing how specialty consults are delivered. By giving hospitals access to specialists remotely, they can avoid unnecessary patient transfers, which are expensive and time-consuming.
Hospitals also save on staffing costs because they don’t need to maintain full on-call coverage at every location—VideoConsults provides coverage on-demand or through on-call arrangements at a fraction of the cost.
At the same time, hospitals can increase revenue by reducing delays in specialty care, improving patient throughput, and retaining patients within their system instead of losing them to outside facilities. Structured intake, integrated diagnostics, and faster consults also improve clinical efficiency, which allows hospitals to handle more cases and bill appropriately for higher-acuity care.
The platform allows them to provide consults virtually to hospitals, urgent care centers, and other healthcare facilities that need their expertise, creating new revenue streams from both direct patient consults (follow-ups) and provider-to-provider consults.
Structured intake, integrated diagnostics, and imaging give the group full clinical visibility for each consult, improving the quality and efficiency of care. Additionally, independent groups can manage their schedule flexibly, participating in on-demand or on-call coverage as preferred, which allows them to expand their practice, increase their caseload, and enhance their reputation across multiple hospitals and regions while minimizing administrative burdens.