Health centers serving underserved populations through telemedicine should ensure they are collecting disaggregated data, building essential care teams and working with non-English speakers to create their programs, according to a recent report.
The report, produced by RAND, uses the lessons learned from the Connected Care Accelerator program that provided funding and technical aid to 45 health centers across California as the pandemic forced systems into using sometimes foreign telehealth techniques. It used existing literature about implementing telehealth in safety net systems as well as its own findings from the results of the care accelerator.
Here are five of their recommendations for effective utilization of telehealth:
- Due to data reporting in aggregate, the researchers found it hard to analyze individual differences and disparities. They recommend using billing modifiers that can differentiate between modalities of telehealth in order to collect the most accurate information to evaluate disparities.
- They recommend that telehealth waivers be extended past the pandemic and made permanent.
- Payers and policymakers should endow health centers with grants to increase accessibility of telehealth to those with limited English, the report recommended. They also advised that non-English speakers should be consulted throughout the rollout and creation process of telehealth platforms.
- Health centers should increase sharing and dissemination of success stories in telehealth to help others learn and improve their own services.
- Medical assistants proved very useful to the rollout of telehealth services, as they plugged gaps left in the hybrid model. Health centers then should consider how to create and care for teams that can spread their resources and knowledge appropriately.