Best Practices for Successful Telehealth Implementations: ATA Practice Guidelines

This article is part of our Good Resources series, where we review people or teams that are producing helpful content about telehealth or healthcare trends. Today we are focusing on the American Telehealth Association's Practice Guidelines. 

Introducing the American Telehealth Association

The American Telehealth Association is likely the largest organization focused entirely on supporting telehealth growth in the United States. They are a non-profit based in Washington DC that provides a host of education, coordination, and lobbying resources to its members. If you want to learn more about the pulse of change and effort across the telehealth landscape, they are a really good place to start.  

Their Membership page gives an overview of the great work that they have been doing and some of the resources that they provide behind the paywall. We are going to focus on their public information, as there is plenty of great stuff to help you improve your telehealth efforts. Future entries in this series will return to the ATA to review some of their other materials. 

The ATA Practice Guidelines

The Resources section of the ATA site has a few sections. The one that we will review today is there Practice Guidelines collection, which they describe as follows: 

“ATA’s practice guidelines for telehealth are a critical foundation for the deployment of telehealth services. Grounded in empirical research and clinical experience, practice guidelines are the basis for uniform, quality patient care and safety. Guidelines accelerate the adoption of telehealth by payers, administrators, providers, government agencies, medical societies and other stakeholders.”

Getting Started

If you’re just starting your telehealth journey, or want a refresher on some of the basics, it may be best to start with their State Toolkits. These are a little out of date at this point (something we at New Ambit are very conscious of), but explain the background that will help point you to the appropriate state authorities and explain part of the ATA’s lobbying mission. 

The newer articles on Patient Satisfaction with Virtual Care, the Adoption of Telehealth in the pandemic are good primers. Additional articles with specific recommendations for how to adjust your practice and personal communication styles for effective video presentations are locked behind the membership paywall. However their Telehealth Bootcamp is a three part series that walks you through establishing a telehealth practice from scratch and is available to all. 

Speciality Focused

There are many speciality focused recommendations and guides as well, but they are behind the membership paywall. Guides are included for:

• TeleICU
• Telepathology
• Primary and Urgent Care
• Teleburn Care
• Telestroke
• Telerehabilitation
• Teledermatology
• Telemental Health

If those are areas that you are interested in, joining the ATA may be the right decision for you.