As exciting as it is to embrace new technologies and continue to push the frontiers of health care delivery, clinicians and health care systems need to consider emergency telehealth’s possible pitfalls in order to better design an equitable and safe telehealth system for both patients and clinicians.

Dr. Joshi is current councillor and past chair of ACEP’s Emergency Telehealth Section. She is the former medical director of the telehealth program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She works in telehealth and digital health consulting and is writing a book on telemedicine.

Dr. Shoemaker is ACEP’s Board liaison to the ACEP Reimbursement Committee. He serves as ACEP‘s alternate RUC representative at the AMA where RVU valuation for the House of Medicine is proposed for CMS.

Mr. McKenzie is ACEP’s reimbursement director. He represents emergency medicine during the AMA RUC and CPT processes.

Dr. Cho

Drs. Cho and Bai are assistant vice chairs of EMRA‘s Technology, Telehealth, and Informatics Committee. Dr. Cho is a resident at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Dr. Bai is a resident at the University of Wisconsin.

References

1. Richard JV, Mehrotra A, Schwamm LH, et al. Improving population access to stroke expertise via telestroke: hospitals to target and the potential clinical benefit. J Am Heart Assoc. 2022;11(8):e025559.
2. Joshi AU, Randolph FT, Chang AM, et al. Impact of emergency department tele‐intake on … – Wiley Online Library. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acem.13890. Accessed November 18, 2022.
3. Adepoju OE, Chae M, Ojinnaka CO, Shetty S, Angelocci, T. Utilization gaps during the COVID-19 pandemic: Racial and ethnic disparities in telemedicine uptake in federally qualified health center clinics. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2022;37(5):1191–1197.
4. Mamedova S, Pawlowski E. A description of U.S. adults who are not digitally literate. Stats in Brief. US Department of Education website. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018161.pdf. Published May 2018. Accessed November 30, 2022.