Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Count your steps toward telehealth.

If you haven’t already dived into telehealth, have some fun by researching the latest possibilities your facility or practice could use to enhance patient care.

Technically speaking, “telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status. Telemedicine includes a growing variety of applications and services using two-way video, email, smart phones, wireless tools and other forms of telecommunications technology,” according to the American Telemedicine Association. Specific formats may include:

• patient consultations via video conferencing
• transmission of still images
• e-health including patient portals
• remote monitoring of vital signs
• continuing medical education
• consumer-focused wireless applications and nursing call centers

Check it out: There’s also a whole new world of “m-Health” — that is, mobile health technology. “The capacity for remote monitoring for patients is moving forward rapidly,” says Mark Silberman, health care partner for Duane Morris in Chicago and former prosecutor for state of Illinois. 

The idea reaches from remote monitoring devices (such as glucose monitors, pacemakers) to even a health app to monitor your steps during the day or your caloric intake. People are even utilizing their smartphones, for example, to get a cardiac rhythm and send the information to their physician. 

“Access to care is fundamentally important, and there’s little doubt as we move forward in making sure people have increased access to the highest quality care, that technology offers exceptional opportunities to facilitate that,” Silberman says.