VA expands access to telehealth services during COVID-19
Posted by Staff | Jan 12, 2021 | News | |
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced last week its Digital Divide Consult has helped more than 12,000 Veterans obtain internet access or a video-capable device fortheir health care needs.
As part of the program, VA providers refer Veterans to a VA social worker, who determines eligibility for various programs to assist with getting the internet service or technology needed for VA telehealth ensuring older Veterans, those living in rural areas and Veterans who are homeless or in temporary housing have the opportunity to participate.
, Veterans with lower incomes, more severe disabilities and more chronic conditions are more likely to use virtual care during the pandemic; but Veterans older than 45 and Veterans who are homeless or who live in rural areas are less likely to use video care. The Digital Divide Consult provides a sol
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Like em or hate em, electronic health records are here to stay. Now it s just a matter of making them work to the best of their ability for patients and clinicians.
Some recent efforts are afoot to rethink the approach to these glorified billing systems from the bottom up. Others are focused on refining and streamlining their user experience to combat the scourge of burdensome charting and alleviate burnout.
In the meantime, with more than 18 million COVID-19 cases and counting so far in the U.S., it s never been clearer that interoperable, ideally telehealth-connected digital records are essential for quality care and public health going forward.
Report: COVID-19 Telehealth Risks and Best Practice Privacy, Security healthitsecurity.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from healthitsecurity.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Journal of the American Medical Association and
Medical Care aims to use electronic health record data to analyze how clinicians spend their time.
The
JAMA study, which compared metadata of clinicians in the United States with those in Canada, Northern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and Oceania, found that U.S. clinicians spent an average of 90 minutes a day actively using the EHR – compared with non-U.S. clinicians, who spent about an hour a day in their EHRs.
Meanwhile, the
Medical Care study analyzed primary care exam lengths using EHR time stamps, finding that the average exam time lasted 1.2 minutes longer than scheduled.
A Harvard Medical School team published a letter in the
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association this week warning of the substantial information security concerns around telehealth.
The authors, led by organizational cybersecurity researcher Mohammad S. Jalali, note that the uptick in telemedicine services has undoubtedly made healthcare more accessible – but that the relaxation in regulations about virtual care combined with a heightened threat landscape can spell trouble. As we continue this shift to telemedicine, new issues and risks unravel that need to be addressed, particularly in regard to information security and privacy, and ongoing work is needed to ensure that our technology infrastructure provides an environment for safe and effective care delivery, they wrote.