Patient Safety and Appropriate Use of Telehealth

With mastery of this domain, the learner is exposed to the breadth of telehealth across modalities and diverse patient populations. Thoughtful selection of the right telehealth tool for a specific patient and clinical context is essential to ensuring high-quality care. Topics covered include risk mitigation, care escalation, and process improvement.

Practice Guidance for Emergency Telehealth and Acute Unscheduled Care Telehealth

This report provides guidelines for meeting quality, safety, effectiveness, reliability, value, satisfaction, and service and consistency metrics in telehealth.

Source: Shaheen E, Davidson P, Mendoza C, et al. (2020)

Patient Safety Risks Associated with Telecare: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of the Literature 

This peer-reviewed publication summarizes patient safety risks associated with telehealth, as derived from a systematic literature review, and categorizes them into provider-centered, organization-centered, technology-centered, and environment-centered risks (sections to highlight are the background, discussion, and conclusion).

Source: Guise V, Anderson J, Wiig S (2014)

Telehealth for Emergency Medicine 

This video spotlights telehealth as a solution for challenges in emergency medicine, including multiple care models (sections to highlight are 2:30-11:20, 18:00-20:00).

Source: American Medical Association (AMA) (2022)

The Availablists: Emergency Care Without the Emergency Department 

This commentary article shifts the paradigm of emergency medicine by defining the specialty by a unique skill set and characteristic - the ability to be omni-available rather than by a location (a brick-and-mortar ED).

Source: Hollander JE, Sharma R (2021)

Telemedicine Risk Management Considerations 

This report specifies the risks inherent in telehealth practice, divided into the following categories: operational, clinical/patient safety, strategic, financial, human capital, legal/regulatory, technology, and hazard (sections to highlight are pages 8-15).

Source: American Society of Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) (2018)

A Toolkit for Building and Growing a Sustainable Telehealth Program in Your Practice 

This report guides a practitioner through steps to maximize efficiency of telehealth programs, including a basic checklist to evaluate appropriateness of telehealth as a modality, steps for vendor selection, and best practices for "webside" manner (sections to highlight are pages 16-34).

Source: American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) (2020)

Telehealth's Newest Safety Risk: Distracted Patients

This web article offers tips on identifying and avoiding patient distraction during a video encounter.

Source: Boisvert, S (2021)

The Appropriate Use of Telemedicine Technologies in the Practice of Medicine

This report provides guidelines on standard of care, including establishment of a physician-patient relationship, informed consent, emergent referral, HIPAA, and more (sections to highlight are pages 6-10).

Source: Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) (2022)

Telemedicine Facilitation of Transfer Coordination from Emergency Departments

This peer-reviewed publication offers an examination and discussion of telehealth for use in interhospital transfer coordination (section to highlight is the discussion).

Source: Hayden EM, Boggs K, Espinola J, et al. (2020)

Envisioning Patient Safety in Telehealth: A Research Perspective

This peer-reviewed publication draws from the defense industry to create a framework for telehealth safety and risk assessment.

Source: Monteagudo JL, Salvador CH, Kun L (2014)

Patient Safety and Emergency Management 

This toolkit familiarizes emergency physicians with escalation of care pathways for telehealth psychiatric patients.

Source: Daviss S, American Psychiatric Association (APA) (2022)

Telemedicine: Risk Management Issues, Strategies, and Resources 

This web article provides national standards of practice in areas including network security, confidentiality, quality improvement, informed consent, record maintenance, and technical support.

Source: Washington State Nurses Association (2018)

Privacy and Security Risk Factors Related to Telehealth Services: A Systematic Review

This peer-reviewed publication identifies and reports on three key factors associated with telehealth privacy and security - environmental, technology, and operational factors (section to highlight is the discussion).

Source: Houser SH, Flite CA, Foster SL (2022)