We've covered so many things about telehealth and your practice. We sincerely hope you have had some new things to think about when adding this service to your practice.
Remember:
Consider ways to take payments and to outsource the work.
Develop your marketing plan.
What do you need to do to adapt your room?
Consider what happens if you choose to go international.
What we do know about telehealth is that it is ever evolving. As we found in 2017 and 2018 with the roll out of Medicare Covered telehealth services. Medicare initially covered 7 sessions with one of the first three having a requirement of face to face. This was quickly changed as the logistics of this was almost impossible to meet. In 2018, Medicare announced the repeal of the face to face and expanded the service to allow all ten services to be provided remotely.
The US is years ahead of Australia in terms of refunding professionals for telehealth service, providing approved secure platforms to deliver the service and having clear guidance around regulation. If we learn from the US we can recognise that this is an ever evolving beast. As we see here in 2016, the US were still struggling with fundamental uniformity around laws and standards across all areas of telehealth service. We suggest that you continue to be diligent with the service and try to think of all of the aspects that can come up in the deliver of the telehealth service.
What we can say is, don't shoot the idea down to integrate the service into your practice. We strongly believe this service is an added benefit for the communities in rural and regional areas. We support the use of telehealth services and we enthusiastically love understanding how practitioners are integrating this as an arm in their practice.
Drop a line if you have a question or are using this innovation in your practice.
