Telehealth Fellowship

Application Fees

• Application fee is $400 at the time of submission.
• Annual fee of $150 for years 1 and 2.
• Annual fee of $200 for year 3 and beyond.
• Please make check payable to "SAEM" and reference "Administrative Fellowship Application."
• Checks can be mailed to: SAEM, 1111 East Touhy Ave, Suite 540, Des Plaines, IL 60018 or faxed using the credit card form [pdf] to (847) 813-5450.

New Application Deadline: September 30, 2022 (then March 31st annually afterwards)

Renewal Application Deadline: September 30th annually

• Renewal applications are due the 3rd year after initial application is approved.
• Subsequent renewals are due every 5 years.

How to Submit

All applications and evaluations must be submitted through the online portal by 5pm Central Time on the deadline. If the deadline falls on a holiday or weekend, applications will be accepted on the next business day. 

You can download a copy of the application form questions. 

Please note, you must submit applications through the online portal. Emailed copies of an application will not be accepted.

Annual Reports

(Non-research fellowships only)

Annual Fellowship Evaluations are required of approved programs on March 31st each year. The annual evaluation will ask you to list graduating fellows. Please make sure to complete this form in order for your fellows to receive their certificate.

Institution Application

Approval of a telehealth fellowship is contingent upon a review of the institutional environment, success of prior graduates and current members of the faculty fellowship team, and proposed curriculum for future fellows. All approved institutions must have an ACGME- approved emergency medicine residency and support for administrative programs in place. They must demonstrate strong collaboration with clinicians, educators, and researchers as well as with other clinical services that supervise relevant rotations. This support may frequently be provided by collaboration with existing administrative fellowship programs in the institution. If such a program is not available for collaboration at an applying institution, careful attention will be given by reviewers to ensure adequate support is available including the opportunity for mentorship from high-level institutional administrators.

Approved telehealth programs may be one or two years. Two year programs must offer a higher level of training with demonstration of providing fellows with skills to assume leadership roles within the the field and application must outline options for pursuit of master’s level training such as an MBA, MHA or similar leadership program.

A site visit and/or interview may be requested at the discretion of the SAEM Fellowship Approval Committee members. Initial approval of a fellowship is for a period of three academic years (July 1 – June 30). At the end of the initial period, programs with demonstrated success can apply for renewal of approval every five years. Approved programs must communicate to the committee annually any changes in administrative emergency medicine fellowship personnel. In the event of the departure or replacement of the program director, a secondary review will be required.

Essential Elements for an SAEM-Approved Fellowship in Emergency Telehealth

An emergency medicine telehealth fellowship should prepare the participant to become a leader in telehealth and health innovation by combining theoretical and hands-on training including expertise in clinical operations, quality improvement processes, entrepreneurship and patient safety. In addition to demonstrating strong clinical leadership skills, graduates also should gain the necessary foundational skills to generate scholarship that will facilitate career advancement in an academic environment if chosen.

1. Administration – development of fundamental skills essential to managing a telehealth department and associated hospital operations. This includes acquisition of advanced knowledge of: principles of effective leadership, continuous quality improvement, personnel management, performance improvement, data science, workforce development, information technology applications relevant to tele-emergency medicine practice, budgeting and accounting processes, and coding and billing. The fellow will acquire these skills via direct tutoring by expert faculty members and direct participation in committees and/or work groups that are responsible for managing these initiatives. Upon completing the training program, the fellow will have acquired expertise in operational and personnel management for telehealth and tele-emergency practice.

2. Education – the development of fundamental medical education experiences to allow the fellow to evolve as a leading educator in telehealth. The fellow will be required to understand the various use cases of telehealth, understand how to teach as well as develop programs to evaluate progress of learners. This may include establishing expertise in key areas of administrative core content as listed above, with educational materials developed by the fellow that can be used to advance the field of tele-emergency care.

3. Research – the development of fundamental skills in quality/safety , ED and/or hospital operations or clinical research to allow the fellow to evolve as a leading researcher in telehealth or emergency medicine in general. The program should include focused health services research training, training in design and conduct of clinical trials, training in writing and reviewing scientific manuscripts and a broad understanding of the uniqueness of research in technology and innovation. By graduation, a fellow should produce a scholarly project or at minimum a well-developed potentially fundable proposal. Fellowships should demonstrate how they will prepare graduates to become scholars, and may choose to have a curriculum that provides broad training in all areas of scholarship (administration, education, and research), or to develop separate tracks that focus on one or more areas of scholarship in more depth while still including a degree of exposure and training in all three areas. To be approved, fellowships must have demonstrated ability to train fellows at their institution. They should also provide faculty that have published track record in telehealth and fills into each of the domains listed.

In order to meet the standards for an approved fellowship, the following curricular elements (core content) must be addressed. All fellowships and graduating fellows must address the all of the core components of ‘Telehealth operational skills’ listed below, and, the majority of the elements of at least one of the two tracks (education or research) also listed below.