Interactive Telemedicine Training Helps Providers Optimize Visits and Stay Compliant

​With telemedicine, risk can arise involving licensure issues, reimbursement challenges, varying state requirements for informed consent, federal and state privacy and confidentiality laws, limitations in provider ability to prescribe controlled substances via telemedicine, and state laws regarding the standard of care and escalation of care. "You can see where this is ripe for a lot of risk," said Neel Naik, MD, assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine and assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine, speaking October 12 at the American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM) 2020 annual conference. Although telemedicine training for providers has traditionally focused on technical issues like which buttons to click, interactive telemedicine training can help providers truly become skilled at providing care through telemedicine and can reduce risks. "We need to start educating our providers how to do this right," said Naik. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, New York-Presbyterian had an established emergency department (ED) telehealth program with multiple components, including optional video visits for patients who physically present to the ED, virtual urgent care, telesitters, community-based teleparamedicine, and telehealth medical screening examinations. Early on, the organization recognized the need to give providers comprehensive training. To that end, Weill Cornell Medicine's Center for Virtual Care offers training on telemedicine basics, "web-side" manner, remote patient examination skills, and specialty-specific modules. Telemedicine training is offered in three stages.