mHealth

A Promising Extension of Telehealth Flexibilities and One Step Closer to Permanent Authorization

Lead

For decades, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), only permitted telehealth in particular geographic settings with numerous restrictions surrounding originating sites, providers, services, modality, and access options. However, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a Public Health Emergency (PHE) that relaxed these restrictions and opened the doors to the use of telehealth in the home, among other measures, which have contributed to Medicare beneficiaries utilizing telehealth in droves with an increase from 840,000 in 2019 to 52.7 million in 2020.

How Does a Telemedicine Pain Program Work in Rural America with Multi-Vulnerable Patient Populations?

Lead

In April 2017 Summit Healthcare started a multi-disciplinary program to treat patients with chronic and acute pain in the White Mountains of Arizona. Our patient service area is HRSA-designated as having a shortage of providers and medically underserved. The area is the size of Rhode Island and includes Native American reservations and other vulnerable populations. Many of our patients live in a high poverty area which makes access to care challenging.

Medicaid, Medicare, Telehealth, and Indian Health: Understanding the Differences

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Medicare and Medicaid – two important programs for paying for health care for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) people. As we near the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), it’s going to be important to understand the differences between these programs and how they may impact reimbursements for telehealth services moving forward. Understanding these differences will be important for understanding the next steps for continuing to get reimbursed and any challenges that may be encountered in that process.

Telemedicine & Telehealth: For Allied Health Professionals, Too

Dr. Elizabeth Krupinski, PhD, Janet Major-Durkel, Melanie Esher-Blair and Peggy Stein lead the  Occupational and Physical Therapy Webinar Series late last month

According to a recent study, one in five adults polled about health care during the coronavirus pandemic said that they or someone in their household delayed receiving medical care or were unable to get care, due to office closures or shutdowns.

Although the pollsters focused questions about doctor or dental appointments, providers across the board experienced disruption in their specialty areas, including Peggy Stein, OTD, OTR/L, CHT, an Occupational Therapist in Oregon.

Money, money, money! FCC Helps Low-income Households Pay for Broadband Service and Connected Internet Devices

Lead

We’ve all seen lots of reports from a variety of source documenting how telemedicine use has skyrocketed during the COVID public health emergency. There have also been many subsequent reports on the significant disparities in access to and use of telemedicine that were revealed and/or exacerbated by COVID. A simple search of Google Scholar brings up thousands of articles from around the world summarizing digital divide and related challenges that have been exposed, and many of them highlight some very creative strategies to help address and reduce barriers to telemedicine care. How can we offer a telemedicine option to someone who does not own a digital device? To someone who does but must choose between using their minutes to support their child’s remote school classes or see their doctor? Or someone who has access to the Internet but at limited bandwidth?

Telehealth QA – Is it all it’s QAcked up to be?

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In hopes of sparking renewed commitment to applying improvement science to telehealth, we offer this Telehealth QI and QA Miniseries. Today is the fourth in the series.

Require expertise and excellence in telehealth service delivery. Expertise with telehealth requires deliberate practice which builds on or modifies existing skills, usually with the help and guidance of a coach or teacher with targeted feedback on what to improve and how to improve those skills.

Data – Your Performance Enhancer

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In hopes of sparking renewed commitment to applying improvement science to telehealth, we offer this Telehealth QI and QA Miniseries. Today is the third in the series.

Recall that data can come in many forms and doesn’t have to be a report out of your electronic medical record (EHR). It can be hashmarks, start-end times, glass globs in a jar and more. I’m not kidding about glass globs. Once when I visited the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) there were two jars; one was labeled “Having a good day” the other was labeled “Having a bad day”. Each person who checked in at reception put a glob in the jar that reflected how their day was going.

The Heart of Telehealth Performance Improvement – The PDSA

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In hopes of sparking renewed commitment to applying improvement science to telehealth, we offer this Telehealth QI and QA Miniseries. Today is the second in the series.

Many people are confused about plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles, and I am here to set everyone straight! Dr. Don Berwick has called the PDSA the heart of the Model for Improvement. However, after many years of helping health care organizations build skill around PDSAs, it seems to be a tough nut to crack, despite its being at core of why humans are such a successful species. The more PDSAs and the faster you do PDSAs, the faster your learning and progress with improvement will be. Here are a few pointers.

The Model for Telehealth Improvement

Lead

How much do you love improvement science? I have been an improvement science evangelist and guru since 2007. That was the year I completed advanced training in health care improvement with Dr. Brent James at Intermountain Healthcare in Utah.

I was a practicing clinician, clinical manager, quality coordinator, practice transformation lead, IT support (and more) at a family medicine residency that was participating in the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative. Learning the power of data and the science of improvement was one of the biggest light bulb moments of my life. I often liken it to when Johnny 5 – the robot in “Short Circuit” – throws open the barn doors, seeing the outside for the first time and remarks, “Ahh – input!”. Suddenly I could ask and answer questions, using data and measurement.