The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented demand for health care at a distance, and telehealth (the delivery of patient care using telecommunications technology) became ...more widespread. Since our 2018 state-of-the-art review assessing the pediatric telehealth landscape, there have been many changes in technology, policy, payment, and physician and patient acceptance of this care model. Clinical best practices in telehealth, on the other hand, have remained unchanged during this time, with the primary difference being the need to implement them at scale.Because of the pandemic, underlying health system weaknesses that have previously challenged telehealth adoption (including inequitable access to care, unsustainable costs in a fee-for-service system, and a lack of quality metrics for novel care delivery modalities) were simultaneously exacerbated. Higher volume use has provided a new appreciation of how patients from underrepresented backgrounds can benefit from or be disadvantaged by the shift toward virtual care. Moving forward, it will be critical to assess which COVID-19 telehealth changes should remain in place or be developed further to ensure children have equitable access to high-quality care.With this review, we aim to (1) depict today's pediatric telehealth practice in an era of digital disruption; (2) describe the people, training, processes, and tools needed for its successful implementation and sustainability; (3) examine health equity implications; and (4) critically review current telehealth policy as well as future policy needs. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is continuing to develop policy, specific practice tips, training modules, checklists, and other detailed resources, which will be available later in 2021.
Telemedicine: a Primer Waller, Morgan; Stotler, Chad
Current allergy and asthma reports,
10/2018, Letnik:
18, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose of Review
Due to rapid advancements in quality of real-time, interactive, audio-visual, and digital technologies as well as impressive gains in internet speed and capacity, medicine delivered ...over distance is happening faster than many healthcare providers and leaders can grasp.
Recent Findings
Depending on which market report you ascribe to, industry projections for the global compounded annual growth rate of telemedicine are between 13 and 27%, with valuation growing to over 20 billion US dollars in the next several years. The Mayo Clinic has reworked its entire telemedicine interest to a model with centralized operations, one virtual technology platform, standardized training, and connectedness for all of its locations. The National Quality Forum spent 2016 and 2017 formulating 70 some pages of recommendations for expanded measures to valuate telemedicine over the foreseeable future. There are so many patient experience studies indicating high satisfaction with telemedicine, that professionals in the industry accept it as fact. Telemedicine is leaving novel to the past.
Summary
This short, informative piece of writing includes expert opinion and research findings about what is telemedicine, why one should practice telemedicine, and how one should approach implementation; a primer from which to grow.
Telemedicine Pays: Billing and Coding Update Bajowala, Sakina S.; Milosch, Jacob; Bansal, Chandani
Current allergy and asthma reports,
10/2020, Letnik:
20, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Purpose of Review
Telemedicine is a rapidly growing healthcare sector that can improve access to care for underserved populations and offer flexibility and convenience to patients and clinicians ...alike. However, uncertainty about insurance coverage and reimbursement policies for telemedicine has historically been a major barrier to adoption, especially among physicians in private practice (the majority of practicing allergists).
Recent Findings
The COVID-19 public health emergency has highlighted the importance of telehealth as a safe and effective healthcare delivery model, with governments and payers rapidly expanding coverage and payment in an effort to ensure public access to healthcare in the midst of an infectious pandemic. This comprehensive review of updated telemedicine coverage and payment policies will include a tabular guide on how to appropriately bill and optimize reimbursement for telemedicine services.
Summary
This review of current trends in telemedicine coverage, billing, and reimbursement will outline the historical and current state of telemedicine payment policies in the USA, with special focus on recent policy changes implemented in light of COVID-19. The authors will also explore the potential future landscape of telehealth coverage and reimbursement beyond the resolution of the public health emergency.
Purpose of Review
The purpose of this review is to describe the determinants of satisfaction with telemedicine (TM) and how they compare with in-person visits from both the perspective of patients ...and of providers.
Recent Findings
The use of TM will expand only if patients and providers are at least as satisfied with it as they are with in-person visits. Since deviations from expected care can result in reduced satisfaction regardless of the quality of the visit or objective medical outcomes, it is important to understand and to help form those expectations when possible. Patients consistently report 95–100% satisfaction rate with TM when compared with in-person appointments. They tend to cite the convenience of decreased travel times and costs as the main drivers for satisfaction with TM. Providers tend to be satisfied with TM if they have input into its development, there is administrative support, the technology is reliable and easy to use, and if there is adequate reimbursement for its use.
Summary
Satisfaction with TM is necessary for adoption of this new technology. To improve satisfaction it is important to consider factors that drive it both for patients and for providers.
Telemedicine in India: Where do we stand? Chellaiyan, Vinoth; Nirupama, A; Taneja, Neha
Journal of family medicine and primary care,
06/2019, Letnik:
8, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Telemedicine is considered to be the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology, thereby providing substantial healthcare to low income regions. Earliest ...published record of telemedicine is in the first half if the 20th century when ECG was transmitted over telephone lines. From then to today, telemedicine has come a long way in terms of both healthcare delivery and technology. A major role in this was played by NASA and ISRO. The setting up of the National Telemedicine Taskforce by the Health Ministry of India, in 2005, paved way for the success of various projects like the ICMR-AROGYASREE, NeHA and VRCs. Telemedicine also helps family physicians by giving them easy acess to speciality doctors and helping them in close monitoring of patients. Different types of telemedicine services like store and forward, real-time and remote or self-monitoring provides various educational, healthcare delivery and management, disease screening and disaster management services all over the globe. Even though telemedicine cannot be a solution to all the problems, it can surely help decrease the burden of the healthcare system to a large extent.
Disasters and pandemics pose unique challenges to health care delivery. As health care resources continue to be stretched due to the increasing burden of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ...telemedicine, including tele-education, may be an effective way to rationally allocate medical resources. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a multimodal telemedicine network in Sichuan Province in Western China was activated immediately after the first outbreak in January 2020. The network synergizes a newly established 5G service, a smartphone app, and an existing telemedicine system. Telemedicine was demonstrated to be feasible, acceptable, and effective in Western China, and allowed for significant improvements in health care outcomes. The success of telemedicine here may be a useful reference for other parts of the world.
Following China's example, on March 30, at the direction of US President Donald Trump, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the nation's major public health programmes, ...issued what it termed “an unprecedented array of temporary regulatory waivers and new rules to equip the American healthcare system with maximum flexibility to respond to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”. The risk–benefit ratio for virtual health care has massively shifted and all the red tape has suddenly been cut.” In Italy, although all 20 regions had implemented national telemedicine guidelines as of 2018, hospital managers have been largely caught off guard by the explosion in digital demand, says Elena Sini, information officer for GVM Care & Research, a network of nine private hospitals in northern Italy. With mobile phone use now globally ubiquitous, technological barriers to the adoption of virtual health care are easily surmountable, even in the most resource-scarce settings, notes Alex Jadad, founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University of Toronto, ON, Canada, where he is the director of the Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation.
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