Telehealth

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health in Lebanon, N.H., will provide telemedicine services and geriatric emergency department training, education and other resources to four rural hospitals in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a comprehensive bill Jan. 1 that requires insurers to  permanently cover telehealth  after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. 

UPMC unveiled a new telehealth model Jan. 4 that lets patients schedule appointments with the Pittsburgh-based health system's virtual primary care service for chronic and acute care conditions, according to ABC affiliate WHTM.

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.