Episode Details

In this episode, Barbara and Andrew discuss:

• How Telehealth services can be utilized by doctors.
• The changing of telehealth right now due to the Coronavirus. 
• Different forms that telehealth can take. 

 Key Takeaways:

• While recently popular, telehealth has been used for years, including by the VA for psychiatric services for a backlog of patients, and remote patients with NASA doctors. 
• To know which telehealth service is correct for you, you must first know why you are wanting to utilize telehealth.
• Telehealth is taking place all the time to provide services to hospitals who may not have that particular department or speciality on staff.

“Things are evolving very, very quickly. People are finding different ways of applying telehealth all the time.” —  Dr. Andrew Bern

Transcription

Barbara:           Welcome to the latest episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. This is your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today, we have with us Dr. Andy Bern, who is an emergency  physician who is also specialized in disaster medicine and telehealth so this is a great asset to our country in this time of need. Welcome Andrew.

Andrew:          Thank you

Barbara:           Well I’d like to tell you a little bit about  Dr. Bern. He did his medical training in Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY and then he worked in the emergency room since 1981 in Ohio, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana. As I said, his area of work includes emergency  medicine, disaster medicine and telehealth. He has received multiple awards including the Pam B. Trenton Trail Blazing Award in 2019 which was a Lifetime Achievement on an Individual who made the most impact on the specialty of emergency medicine. Well that is pretty impressive Dr. Bern.

Andrew:          Thank you

Barbara:           How can a doctor use telehealth services.

Andrew:          Telehealth actually goes back quite a way. It actually began in the early 70’s as a project between NASA and the Indian Health Service. The problem they were trying to deal with there is providing healthcare to the tribes and individuals that were considered remote and very, very rural and they didn’t have access to healthcare clinics or a physician. In this project with the Indian Health Service they set up satellites and connected them with physicians back at NASA and NASA used this technology that they developed for deployment with the astronauts and the astronaut programs that took place later in the 70’s.

Barbara:           Well there are a lot of doctors who had not been using telehealth that are trying to jump on the bandwagon now that they are not seeing their healthy patients. What should you look for as a doctor in terms of choosing a telehealth service since there is more than one around?

Andrew:          There are multiple telehealth services around. I think the biggest change that has happened in the last week, in that last week CMS Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services has made a relaxation of the rules for the use of telehealth and getting your reimbursement and the HIPPA have also been relaxed in terms of using devices that have been pre-authorized or certified as HIPPA compliant. Both of those rules have been relaxed in the coronavirus.

For my colleagues they are using, for example, their smart ph