Telehealth providers often struggle with several key problems, including accessibility of the platform, regulatory and infrastructure barriers and sharing data. A report from the National Committee for Quality Assurance, released May 10, highlights those key challenges and provides solutions for providers.
Here are the three main challenges of successful telehealth rollout and some ways they can be fixed:
Accessibility of telehealth: A patient's digital literacy, language abilities or socioeconomic levels can all create barriers to accessibility for telehealth. Building virtual programs that have different language options, are culturally sensitive and designing them for a variety of people with disabilities are just a few ways to improve accessibility.
Regulatory, policy and infrastructure concerns: The laws that govern telehealth providers are in flux. To help clear pathways for concrete protections of telehealth, organizations should consider collaborating with community and corporate partners to campaign for certain provisions and widen accessibility to broadband infrastructure.
Telehealth data sharing: While many organizations do not share patient data across organizations or platforms, doing so can help increase health equity and outcomes by understanding the entire patient journey. Consider making digital technologies interoperable across clinical platforms and gather and share patient data both inside and outside visits.