Ethical Practices and Legal Requirements

The practice of telehealth hinges on maintaining high ethical standards (i.e. patient privacy, data security, patient-provider relationship). In addition, this domain addresses the impact of an evolving legal and regulatory landscape.

Ethics, Guidelines, Standards, and Policy: Telemedicine, COVID-19, and Broadening the Ethical Scope

This peer-reviewed publication offers a review of ethical, legal, and social issues in healthcare over the years, with an emphasis on the importance of keeping ethical principles in the forefront while adopting new technology.

Source: Kaplan B (2022)

Promise and Peril: Defining Ethical Telehealth Practice From the Clinician and Patient Perspective - A Qualitative Study

This peer-reviewed publication assesses telehealth's effect on the pillars of medical ethics: autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, and the patient-provider relationship (sections to highlight are the introduction, results, and discussion).

Source: Keenan AJ, Tsourtos G, Tieman J (2022)

Telemedicine Practice: Review of the Current Ethical and Legal Challenges

This peer-reviewed publication addresses telehealth, ethics, informed consent, and malpractice, with particular concerns including data privacy and ensuring the patient experience is not overshadowed by system cost/benefits of telehealth (sections to highlight are the introduction, results, and discussion).

Source: Nittari G, Khuman R, Baldoni S (2020)

National Telehealth Resource Center for Policy: Ten-Year Anniversary Report

This report reviews telehealth legal regulations at state and federal levels from the last ten years.

Source: Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) (2022)

Ethical Practice in Telehealth and Telemedicine

This peer-reviewed publication provides a summary of American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs report on ethical practice in telehealth and telemedicine, setting frameworks and definitions to analyze the ethical use of telehealth.

Source: Chaet D, Clearfield R, Sabin JE, et al. (2020)

Revisiting Health Information Technology Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues and Evaluation: Telehealth/Telemedicine and COVID-19

This peer-reviewed publication analyzes and synthesizes the many ethical and legal challenges related to telehealth, including aspects related to clinician/patient responsibilities, informed consent, privacy, and threats of commercialization.

Source: Kaplan B (2020)

Comparison of Telehealth-Related Ethics and Guidelines and a Checklist for Ethical Decision-Making in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This peer-reviewed publication explores ethical considerations of telehealth. Although intended to guide the practice of behavioral analysts, the principles offer a good framework for the ethical considerations of using telehealth that have many overlaps with using telehealth as part of clinical practice.

Source: Baumes A, Čolić M, Araiba S (2020)

Policy Statement: Emergency Medicine Telehealth

This report outlines fair and ethical practices of telehealth and legal implications for physicians. The report was written by emergency physicians but the content is applicable to physicians of all specialties.

Source: American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) (2020, revised 2022)

Telemedicine Toolkit

This report provides a review of regulation relevant to telehealth, including business associate agreement compliance, cross-state licensure, antitrust laws, and anti-kickback laws.

Source: American Health Information Management Association (2017)

The Prominent Issues Telehealth Must Tackle When the Pandemic Passes

This physician interview emphasizes approaching care across state lines with ethical and cultural sensitivity (sections to highlight are questions 1 and 2).

Source: Bill Siwicki (2021)