Telehealth

UCLA Health is creating telehealth-specific triage protocols to help providers determine when it is appropriate to deliver care to patients via a virtual approach, according to a Dec. 30 NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery report.

Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home, Ark., will discontinue its mobile urgent care app Dec. 31, but will still offer alternative telehealth options. 

Here are the five most popular telehealth stories published by Becker's Hospital Review in 2020:

From social distancing requirements to expanded insurance coverage, telehealth usage became widespread this year thanks to several components of the healthcare industry's response to COVID-19.

In previous posts of this series, we discussed several benefits of using telehealth during COVID-19 spikes and beyond – including addressing healthcare inequality, how telehealth works in tandem with remote patient monitoring and asynchronous care, and how it helps keep patients connected when elective procedures…

On March 18, 2020, CMS temporarily banned “elective surgeries, and  non-essential medical, surgical, and dental procedures ” in order to reserve hospital and ICU capacity exclusively for COVID-19 cases. 

Telehealth adoption accelerated this year thanks to social distancing initiatives aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. 

The acceleration of virtual care adoption by both providers and patients during the pandemic has helped develop new telehealth opportunities and prepared health systems to deal with the latest virus resurgence.

ProMedica launched an at-home acute care offering for patients who would have typically required hospitalization, the Toledo, Ohio-based health system announced Dec. 17.

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated telehealth adoption and highlighted the need for a digital intake process that helps health systems and medical groups collect the same important patient information for virtual visits as they do for in-person ones.