A week ago at the American Telemedicine Association’s annual conference, speakers lamented the lack of integration between telehealth systems and electronic health records. Certainly, interoperability in healthcare in general hasn’t been good, but there is some telehealth-EHR integration going on.
Courtesy of a deal between two of its vendors, Medical University of South Carolina is embedding access to its Vidyo video communication platform into its Epic Systems EHR. “We are just in the launching phase of that now,” said Dr. James McElligot, medical director for telehealth at the Charleston, South Carolina-based med school and health system.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Vidyo, of Hackensack, New Jersey, recently integrated its platform into the Epic Hyperspace physician portal and MyChart patient portal, via an application programming interface. This integration means that MUSC practitioners can click on a video icon right from the EHR scheduling screen and initiate a virtual visit. “The records are right there,” McElligot said. “That is a magical thing for us.”
MUSC has a pretty extensive telehealth program. Virtual visits are just the latest offering, on top of existing services in remote intensive care, telestroke, telemental health, school-based telemedicine, maternal fetal telemedicine and co-management for a patient-centered medical home.
McElligot said MUSC leadership is pushing for the whole medical staff to incorporate telehealth into their practices. The Epic-Vidyo integration makes it easy for some who aren’t particularly tech-savvy to do so, he said.
“The idea of bringing your health record and your telehealth together really makes sense,” McElligot said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“A lot of the telehealth solutions to date have been external to the medical record,” he added. “Obviously, that’s a workflow problem.”
Photo: Medical University of South Carolina
