Athenahealth launches new EHR-embedded telehealth tool
Athenahealth declared this 7 days that it experienced introduced an embedded telehealth instrument to let practitioners to conduct virtual visits without having getting to obtain independent application or use one more 3rd-bash application.
The Watertown, Massachusetts-based cloud computing seller mentioned athenaTelehealth – which is absolutely free for its athenaOne electronic health report instrument prospects till September thirty – allows companies to far more easily conduct HIPAA-compliant telehealth visits inside of practice workflows, from scheduling to affected person messaging, video clip conferencing, simultaneous-experience documentation and billing.
“I have been applying athenaTelehealth completely in my family medication practice for various weeks now,” mentioned Dr. Dillon Miller, a Blue Ridge, Ga-based medical professional, in a assertion. “My patients and my personnel understand telehealth is the future of affected person care, and I am glad to see athenahealth has specified us a solution to aid this new conventional of care.”
WHY IT Matters
Practitioners close to the country have viewed skyrocketing telehealth appointment numbers given that the start out of COVID-19, and athenahealth claims it really is no exception.
In accordance to the company, “the athenahealth community noticed a three,400% in general raise in day-to-day telehealth visits from mid-February to late April.”
By immediately integrating video clip conferencing inside of the athenaOne EHR, the company claims it hopes to streamline affected person and service provider expertise.
“Users can simply accessibility their telehealth consultations from any computer system or mobile gadget with a contemporary web browser and integrated camera – no supplemental application or integration demanded,” in accordance to athenahealth.
The company claims athenaTelehealth “leverages current affected person conversation channels, which include email and textual content message based on affected person preferences, and provides telehealth instructions and a seamless affected person expertise.”
Nurses can finish affected person consumption by means of the EHR and then initiate a so-identified as virtual handoff to practitioners.
In an athenaTelehealth demo video clip, a company consultant explains that a medical professional has accessibility to “the similar array of documentation varieties offered in a telehealth experience as she would in a usual clinic-based examination.”
Presented that patients may possibly need to have the existence of clinical interpreters, care crew users, advocates or supplemental support, the instrument makes it possible for up to four individuals to be a part of consultations from any gadget with a camera. It is unclear no matter if patients without having accessibility to broadband, smartphones or other webcams can also seek out care by means of athenaTelehealth.
THE Much larger Trend
With the coronavirus pandemic continuing to necessitate social distancing through the country, a plethora of telemedicine vendors have stepped up to the plate, presenting videoconferencing and distant affected person-checking, between other options for care.
At the similar time, experts have warned of the prospective safety issues with the telehealth explosion, specifically specified the velocity at which many health techniques have rolled out significantly greater telehealth deployments than they may possibly have been made use of to.
“Any time you make a improve to an IT setting, you have the prospective to raise risk,” mentioned Andy Riley, executive director of safety tactic at the managed-safety-products and services seller Nuspire.
“When you introduce swift improve, that prospective goes up promptly,” he mentioned.
ON THE Report
“The capacity to present our patients with a telehealth system that allows HIPAA compliance even though in the experience entirely transformed our telemedicine assistance,” mentioned Deb Twardowski, a board-accredited advanced nurse practitioner with Western Clinical Associates. “Western Clinical Associates has been an athenahealth client for fourteen many years, and we ended up overwhelmingly impressed with the company’s swift improvement of a telehealth option to care for our patients for the duration of the pandemic.”
Kat Jercich is senior editor of Health care IT Information.
Twitter: @kjercich
Health care IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.
