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Medicare is a federal health insurance program in the United States, with the goal of facilitating medical care by providing health insurance to people over 65, people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The Medicare program started in 1996, under the United States Social Security Administration. Today, the program is run and governed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In 2019, the Medicare program provided health insurance for over 60 million Americans, most of whom were senior citizens.
The Medicare program is divided into four parts, each covering specific services:
The insurance coverage Medicare provides is invaluable for millions of Americans, who would otherwise often face astronomical medical bills. Most people over 65 and people with disabilities typically have treatments that involve various prescription drugs and are more exposed to various types of medical conditions. This is why the help Medicare offers, in the form of insurance coverage, is indispensable.
Apart from payment for medical services, there’s also the question of access to medical care. For the older population and people with disabilities, regular visits to the doctor’s office or a medical facility are a taxing endeavor in and of itself.
Add to that the fact that there’s a shortage of healthcare professionals — mainly specialists — in the U.S., and that patients in rural and geographically isolated areas have limited access to healthcare, and it becomes evident that something more needs to be done.
That’s why CMS embraced telemedicine and telehealth as legitimate ways of delivering medical care to Medicare program members. In this article, we’ll talk about how Medicare views remote healthcare services, what limitations it may impose, what providers are eligible to provide telemedicine and telehealth to Medicare members, and how you can bill Medicare for those services.
With the advancement of technology — specifically telecommunications — more and more states have turned to telemedicine and telehealth as a viable alternative to in-person medical care. Remote healthcare services have also proven to be an effective way to combat the shortage of medical workers and improve access to healthcare across the country.
In recent years, most states have enacted telemedicine parity laws, providing an incentive for both patients and healthcare providers to embrace remote healthcare services. Although the laws vary from state to state, most large commercial payers in the U.S. cover telemedicine and telehealth services.
The Medicare program also has a favorable outlook on telemedicine and telehealth and provides coverage for a wide range of medical services that are delivered remotely to the program’s members.
That said, Medicare does enforce certain limitations regarding eligible healthcare providers and sites at which remote healthcare services can be received. Before we get to restrictions and limitations that may apply, we have to take a look at how Medicare defines telemedicine and telehealth, and what other terms the program uses to refer to remote healthcare services, in order to fully understand what services are covered.
Although some state laws recognize the difference between telemedicine and telehealth, Medicare uses the two terms interchangeably.
As far as Medicare is concerned, telemedicine and telehealth both refer to healthcare services that are delivered remotely through the use of electronic information and telecommunications technology.
Telemedicine often refers to traditional clinical examination, diagnosis, and treatment, while telehealth is considered to be a more encompassing term that also includes patient and provider health-related education, public health, and health administration.
When it comes to Medicare, the main goal of telemedicine and telehealth is to improve access to health care and facilitate the delivery of healthcare services to the program’s members. To that end, Medicare allows healthcare professionals to utilize software and equipment that allows for a two-way, real-time interactive communication between them and the patients.
The key thing to note here is that, while Medicare provides coverage for telemedicine, it only does so when the services are delivered via live, two-way audio-video communication. In other words, Medicare does not provide coverage for telephone-only doctor-patient consultation or facsimile transmissions.
Medicare provides coverage for a variety of telemedicine and telehealth services. The program’s members can take advantage of modern technology to get:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became obvious that telemedicine and telehealth services are a necessity and not just a more convenient way to deliver and receive medical care. To help accelerate the adoption of remote healthcare across the U.S. during these troubling times, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) created a Medicaid & CHIP Telehealth toolkit.
The purpose of the toolkit is to encourage the states and help them adopt telemedicine and telehealth coverage policies, in order to make it easier for providers to implement telemedicine and start providing their services to Medicare members remotely. If you intend to offer remote healthcare services to Medicare patients, we strongly recommend checking the CMS toolkit out.
Apart from telemedicine and telehealth, there are a few other key terms that Medicare uses in regard to remote healthcare services. As a healthcare professional, you should familiarize yourself with these terms if you plan on providing remote healthcare services to Medicare beneficiaries.
These key terms are:
An originating site refers to the Medicare patient’s location at the time of receiving remote healthcare services. Given that Medicare members are people older than 65 or people with disabilities, a telepresenter is often needed at the originating site to facilitate the delivery of remote healthcare services.
A distant site is the location of a healthcare provider from which the telemedicine and telehealth services are provided.
Remote patient monitoring refers to leveraging modern equipment to collect and transmit patients’ medical data from an originating site to a healthcare provider at a distant site.
Store-and-forward technology refers to the transmission of medical data from one site to another, using telecommunications technology.
What’s interesting to note is that CMS medical codes give providers an opportunity to get reimbursed for store-and-forward, when using the technology to analyze and diagnose images sent to them by established patients. That said, this is only applicable in Alaska and Hawaii, provided that the patient is at an eligible originating site.
The crucial thing to understand about Medicare and remote healthcare services is that not every medical professional is eligible for reimbursement.
Medicare provides an exclusive list of healthcare providers who are eligible for reimbursement for services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries through telehealth and telemedicine. Under Medicare, eligible healthcare providers are:
Aside from listing which healthcare professionals can offer remote healthcare services to Medicare beneficiaries, CMS also has a detailed list of eligible originating sites. When most people think of telemedicine, they immediately picture a patient sitting at home and talking to a doctor on their laptop or phone.
This isn’t exactly the case when it comes to Medicare patients. The reason for this is that Medicare doesn’t recognize a patient’s home as an eligible originating site. Instead, a patient has to be admitted to a medical facility and can receive telemedicine and telehealth services in addition to the in-person medical care they’re being provided at the facility.
In addition to this limitation, Medicare also significantly narrows down the geographical areas in which telehealth coverage is provided. This stems from the fact that Medicare views telemedicine and telehealth primarily as a way to improve access to healthcare professionals and specialists for patients in rural areas.
To that end, eligible originating sites must be located in a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) or outside of any Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). This severely limited the number of medical facilities that qualify as eligible, so in 2014, CMS adopted the definition of rural HPSAs as areas located in rural census tracts. This somewhat improved the situation by providing telemedicine and telehealth coverage to facilities in rural census tracts that are still within Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
Eligible distant sites under Medicare are:
The geographic limitations that we mentioned above proved to be a bit limiting in practice.
That’s why CMS allows for a few exceptions from geographic and facility restrictions, for a handful of conditions:
End-Stage Renal Disease — Given the severity of this medical condition, ESRD services are an exception to the usual rule in that both renal dialysis facilities and the patient’s home are considered eligible originating sites. In the event that ESRD services are delivered remotely to a patient in their home, an monthly in-person visit from a medical professional is required for the first three months. After that, an in-person visit is necessary every three months.
Acute stroke treatment — When it comes to acute stroke treatment, a mobile stroke unit is eligible for reimbursement, and standard geographic limitations do not apply. One thing to note is that a site that otherwise doesn’t meet Medicare’s eligibility criteria will not be eligible for an originating site facility fee.
Substance use disorder treatment — The standard geographic restrictions do not apply for telehealth services rendered in regards to the treatment of substance use disorder or a co-occurring mental health disorder. In these two instances, the patient’s home is also considered an eligible originating site, but it does not qualify for the facility fee.
Apart from eligible originating and distant sites, there are a couple of other things healthcare providers need to be aware of when billing for telemedicine services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries.
When it comes to Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine services, providers are reimbursed at the same rates as if the services were delivered in-person. This means that said services have to mimic in-person visits — the technology used needs to enable healthcare providers to examine, diagnose, and treat the patients in accordance with the standards of practice applicable to in-person settings.
Keep in mind that the patient needs to be at an eligible originating site. If you’re unsure whether a site meets the geographic restrictions, you can quickly check it using Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) handy Medicare eligibility analyzer tool.
When billing Medicare for telemedicine and telehealth services, you also have to make sure to use the appropriate HCPCS/CPT Code. The code must correspond to the services provided, and you also need to use the GT modifier when billing to indicate that the services were delivered remotely.
Here’s a comprehensive list of Medicare telemedicine billing codes:
Healthcare service | HCPCS/CPT Code |
| Follow-up inpatient telehealth consultations provided to beneficiaries in hospitals or SNFs | G0406–G0408 |
| Individual and group kidney disease education services | G0420–G0421 |
| Telehealth consultations (emergency department, initial inpatient visits) | G0425–G0427 |
| Individual and group diabetes self-management training services (minimum of one hour of in-person instruction furnished in the initial year training period) | G0108–G0109 |
| Office or other outpatient visits | 99201–99215 |
| Individual and group health and behavior assessment and intervention | 96150–96154 |
| Individual psychotherapy | 90832–90838 |
| Subsequent hospital care services (limit of one telehealth visit every three days) | 99307–99310 |
| Telehealth Pharmacologic Management | G0459 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services included in the monthly capitation payment | 90951, 90952, 90954, 90955, 90957, 90958, 90960, 90961 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients younger than two years of age (monitoring the adequacy of nutrition, assessment of growth and development, counseling of parents) | 90963 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients from 2–11 years old (monitoring the adequacy of nutrition, assessment of growth and development, counseling of parents) | 90964 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients from 12–19 years old | 90965 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients 20 years of age or older | 90966 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for dialysis less than a full month of service, per day, for patients younger than two years of age | 90967 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for dialysis less than a full month of service, per day, for patients from 2–11 years old | 90968 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for dialysis less than a full month of service, per day, for patients from 12–19 years old | 90969 |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)-related services for dialysis less than a full month of service, per day, for patients 20 years of age or older | 90970 |
| Individual and group medical nutrition therapy | G0270, 97802–97804 |
| Psychiatric diagnostic interview examination | 90791–90792 |
| Psychotherapy for crisis | 90839, 90840 |
| Neurobehavioral status examination | 96116 |
| Smoking cessation services | G0436, G0437, 99406, 99407 |
| Alcohol and or/substance abuse structured assessment and intervention services | G0396, G0397 |
| Annual alcohol misuse screening, 15 minutes | G0442 |
| Brief face-to-face behavioral counseling for alcohol misuse, 15 minutes | G0443 |
| Annual depression screening, 15 minutes | G0444 |
| High-intensity behavioral counseling to prevent sexually transmitted infection; face-to-face, individual (includes education, skills training, and guidance on how to change sexual behavior; performed semi-annually), 30 minutes | G0445 |
| Psychoanalysis | 90855 |
| Telehealth Consultation, Critical Care, initial, physicians typically spend 60 minutes communicating with the patient and providers via telehealth | G0508 |
| Telehealth Consultation, Critical Care, subsequent, physicians typically spend 50 minutes communicating with the patient and providers via telehealth | G0509 |
| Annual, face-to-face intensive behavioral therapy for cardiovascular disease, individual, 15 minutes | G0446 |
| Face-to-face behavioral counseling for obesity, 15 minutes | G0447 |
| Transitional care management services with moderate medical decision complexity | 99495 |
| Transitional care management services with high medical decision complexity | 99496 |
| Advance Care Planning, 30 minutes | 99497 |
| Advance Care Planning, additional 30 minutes | 99498 |
| Family psychotherapy (without the patient present) | 90846 |
| Family psychotherapy (with patient present) | 90847 |
| Prolonged service in the office or other outpatient setting requiring direct patient contact beyond the usual service; first hour | 99354 |
| Prolonged service in the office or other outpatient setting requiring direct patient contact beyond the usual service; each additional 30 minutes | 99355 |
| Prolonged service in the inpatient or observation setting requiring unit/floor time beyond the usual service; first hour | 99356 |
| Prolonged service in the inpatient or observation setting requiring unit/floor time beyond the usual service; each additional 30 minutes | 99357 |
| Health Risk Assessment | 96160, 96161 |
| Annual Wellness Visit, includes a personalized prevention plan of service (PPS) first visit | G0438 |
| Annual Wellness Visit, includes a personalized prevention plan of service (PPPS) subsequent visit | G0439 |
| Prolonged preventive services | G0513, G0514 |
| Counseling visit to discuss the need for lung cancer screening using low dose CT scan (LDCT) (service is for eligibility determination and shared decision making | G0296 |
| Interactive Complexity Psychiatry Services and Procedures | 90785 |
| Comprehensive assessment of and care planning for patients requiring chronic care management | G0506 |
Whether you want to start offering telemedicine and telehealth services to Medicare beneficiaries and other patients, as well as attract new ones — Curogram is the perfect solution!
Our telemedicine platform is fully HIPAA compliant, integrates with virtually any EHR, and allows you to set up your virtual clinic and start seeing patients remotely in less than 48 hours!
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Curogram comes with a myriad of useful tools that facilitate remote healthcare services — from a HIPAA compliant two-way messaging platform and secure PHI sharing to automated appointment reminders and advanced waiting room management tools.
It’s intuitive and easy to use for both patients and your doctors and medical staff. If you want to learn more about Curogram and test out its features — click here to get started today for free!
","status":"publish","position":0},{"id":"5f5fa336510e2237f71160bb","slug":"is-zoom-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Zoom HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"When it comes to web conferencing apps, Zoom is among the favorites worldwide. It is a cloud-based platform that allows for multiple people to participate in a meeting, share files, and chat. Zoom is notoriously easy to use, which is one of the main reasons behind its popularity.
Healthcare professionals around the globe have been using Zoom for telemedicine and telehealth purposes for some time now. Does this popular platform comply with the rules of HIPAA?
As a third party app that you’ll be using to transmit electronic protected health information (ePHI), Zoom needs to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) with you in order to be considered HIPAA compliant. They are willing to do so and offer to enact a bunch of security measures on your Zoom account, such as the following:
Bear in mind that Zoom is not HIPAA compliant in and of itself but only after you enter into a BAA with them, according to their website.
They have a HIPAA compliance guide online explaining how Zoom supports all HIPAA standards, such as access and audit controls, end-to-end encryption, and integrity mechanisms. However, Zoom’s security has come into question as users started experiencing “Zoombombings” where users are exposed to pornographic content or live racist comments from uninvited users. The Department of Homeland Security also recently issued a report citing that Zoom may be vulnerable to foreign surveillance.
A lot of security and privacy issues with Zoom have been uncovered, prompting many healthcare organizations, schools, and companies to ban the use of the platform while some have even filed lawsuits. These recent developments seriously call into question Zoom’s security and compliance with HIPAA requirements.
Curogram is a HIPAA compliant solution designed specifically for healthcare providers and patients. With our modern telemedicine and texting platform, you won’t have to worry about fulfilling HIPAA requirements as we have all the safeguards in place.
Here are some other problems you’ll encounter with Zoom that Curogram can solve:
Without integration, you have to manually create appointments in Zoom, and you have to manually send patients invites to your Zoom meetings prior to each appointment. This double entry of appointments into two separate systems and extra coordination prior to an appointment is cumbersome for staff. These are major downsides of a platform that you intend to use for telemedicine.
Curogram integrates with virtually any EHR. You can easily synchronize your appointments from your EHR or practice management system which means that you only have to enter appointments once! Patients will also automatically receive text and email reminders with the proper video chat links without any additional work from your staff. This integrated workflow eliminates unnecessary work from staff and significantly reduces wasted time.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
The integration process is done within 48 hours, thanks to our proprietary integration technology. No need to deal with complicated and expensive HL7 interfaces that take months to complete and cost an arm and a leg.
Curogram | Zoom | |
EHR integration | Yes | No |
Easy Patient On-boarding | Yes | No |
Advanced Waiting Room Management Tools | Yes | No |
Patient Intake Forms and Payment Requests | Yes | No |
Document Transfer | Yes | No |
Zoom requires patients to download an app in order to enter a video chat. While mobile apps are common today, downloading and registering with an app is a cumbersome process even for tech-savvy patients. Consumers today have pages and pages of apps on their phones, and most don’t want another one, especially when it will be used infrequently. Most people are only patients 3-4 times a year, and not all visits can be via telemedicine, so downloading an app that might only be used once or twice in a year is an annoyance to most people. Also, troubleshooting an app download just before you’re about to start an appointment can be stressful for patients, doctors and staff. Many times, troubleshooting an app download results in a delay in the appointment which can cause delays in a doctor’s overall schedule.
With Curogram, patients are not required to download an app to start a video visit. A one-click link in their text or email (automatically sent to them through EHR integration) launches their video visit with the medical practice.
Zoom doesn’t do anything to make it easier for doctors and nurses to do their job virtually. All the workflows that are required in an in-person office visit are still required for a virtual visit:
A front desk staff needs to check out the patient and provide them visit related documents such as visit summaries, treatment plans, prescription orders and referral documents.
Zoom does not provide any tools to enable the above workflows that are required for a virtual visit.
Curogram streamlines the entire process with workflow tools that allow doctors and staff to mimic workflows of in-person visits.
Curogram EHR integrated document transfer features can be used to easily send patients documents directly from the EHR.
One of the most important aspects of an in-person visit is the waiting room. Staff can see who is waiting to be checked in. Nurses can see who’s ready to be seen and prepare them before the doctor takes over. With Zoom, there’s no way to easily identify what stage of the appointment the patient is in.
Curogram’s telemedicine waiting room view allows staff and doctors to view the schedule and active patient queue with the current status of a patient, making it easy for staff and doctors to identify what stage of the appointment process patients are in and who should see the patient next. This virtual waiting room view can be filtered by Provider, Patient Status, and Appointment Type. Doctors and Staff can configure the view to match their assigned tasks. For example, front desk staff can just view patients that are waiting to be checked in, while doctors can select to view only patients who are ready to consult.
Patients still need to be checked in for virtual visits, so offices need to collect intake forms, updated insurance cards and copays. Zoom does not offer any tools to collect patient intake forms or payments, so it requires front desk staff to use other methods or other software tools to get the job done.
Curogram’s Electronic Patient Forms and Payments features enables front desk staff to collect intake forms and payments via text. The intake form collection process can even be automated because Curogram integrates with an office’s EHR or practice management system, so Curogram automatically knows which appointments are for new patients and they can be automatically sent intake forms 2-3 days in advance. Completed forms are returned as a clean easy-to-read PDF that can be uploaded to the EHR. Payment requests are sent to the patient by the front desk prior to the appointment, and patients can easily pay by entering their credit card info online.
After a visit, patients are usually provided visit summaries, treatment plans/instructions, prescription orders, and referral orders. For an in-person visit, these are usually provided to the patient upon check-out. Virtual visits are no different. Zoom does not provide any HIPAA-compliant document transfer solutions to solve this problem.
Curogram offers an integrated solution for sending documents directly from the EHR directly to patients via text. This feature completes the appointment workflow process, enabling a practice to see a patient virtually in the same way that they do in-person.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HSS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued a Notification of Enforcement Discretion for Telehealth Remote Communications During the COVID-19 Nationwide Public Health Emergency.
According to this notification, during the COVID-19 national emergency, healthcare providers can use non-public facing communication platforms that are not entirely HIPAA compliant for telemedicine or telehealth purposes without risking penalties.
This may sound like great news, but in reality, a non-compliant platform comes with many risks and won’t be helpful in the long run. These solutions are non-compliant for a reason. Some of these risks of using non-compliant solutions include:
The OCR will eventually lift the Enforcement Discretion regulation. If you’re still stuck with a non-compliant solution by that time and your patients get used to virtual visits, you’ll have little time to find a new platform to cater to their needs.
The scary truth is that even after the national emergency is over, until a vaccine for coronavirus is developed, the possibility of the virus returning for a second wave remains. It’s much better to be prepared for that prospect with a long-term HIPAA-compliant telemedicine solution.
Transitioning to telemedicine can be extremely difficult, especially if you don’t know what to look for in a sea of possible telemedicine solutions. Some of the problems healthcare providers will face include:
Patients will dread having to download another app they will only use once or twice. Older patients may not be comfortable downloading an app, and even younger tech-savvy patients don’t have the patience to download and register with another app.
Curogram offers a solution to that problem in the form of a browser-based video that you can access by clicking the link. There’s no need to download anything, and there are no special requirements.
The goal again is to find a browser-based solution with no download requirements so that doctors can enter their appointments easily. It is important to minimize the time the doctor has to spend dealing with patient on-boarding and IT issues.Curogram’s simple web-based telemedicine interface for doctors makes it easy for doctors to get in and out of video visits, and Curogram’s waiting room management tools allow staff to handle patient check-in and check-out. This allows the doctor to focus on the consultation, and it allows doctors to see more patients during the day, which means more revenue for the practice.
You should look for a platform that doesn’t just provide automated reminders, but also full two-way texting. Your patients should be able to respond to your messages and reminders if they have any further questions or wish to reschedule.
Bear in mind that reminders in telemedicine are different from those for in-person visits. Patients can easily get carried away watching TV and forget about the appointment within minutes. That’s why a simple 15-minute reminder before the visit can make a huge difference in reducing patient no-shows, but they are not useful for in-person visits. Curogram differentiates between in-person and telemedicine visits, giving you the option to customize messaging and timing of reminders based on your appointment type. You can customize in-person visit reminders with driving directions and prep instructions while telemedicine reminders give patients virtual visit instructions as well as the necessary video link for the visit.
Curogram’s two-way texting system allows you to send HIPAA compliant SMS messages to your patients directly from your desktop computer, and clients have reported a 50% reduction in phone calls after using the platform. This is not in-app messaging. They get a real-time SMS text message that they are bound to see because SMS text is on the first screen of every patient’s phone. In contrast, software that allows you to send “in-app” messages are usually ineffective because new apps are often buried under 7 screens of apps, so notifications can often be overlooked.
Your staff need to have a HIPAA-compliant way of communicating amongst themselves while working remotely or in a large office. If staff are chatting over Whatsapp, FaceTime, or some other non-HIPAA-compliant messaging app, you are exposed to liability for HIPAA violations where fines can be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Staff need a HIPAA-compliant tool so that sensitive patient information doesn’t end up sitting on their personal phones. Curogram provides a secure staff-to-staff messaging channel all in the same dashboard as patient texting. You can also create group chats where you can talk about patients, work topics, and projects as a group.
You’ll need to establish some policies around your employees’ work environment at home. Some of these include:
Relying on, non-secure solutions such as Zoom that don’t provide any workflow tools or integration with your practice management solution won’t get you far in your telemedicine journey. You’ll encounter many obstacles and risks at the start that you could avoid by using Curogram instead.
Here are some challenges you may experience using Zoom and other unreliable providers:
If your patients are confused and frustrated by an app that is buggy or difficult to use, they’ll give up and won’t show up for the visit at all. This could also prompt them to leave bad reviews of your practice on Google and Yelp, and we all know that online reviews can make or break you.
With Curogram, patients get an instant connection without any obstacles, such as room codes. Once they enter the room, the familiar process involving check-in, consultation, and check-out will provide them a smooth virtual visit experience.
Without natural workflows, EHR integration, and staff assistance, doctors will have to waste a lot of time on each individual patient. Many doctors new to telemedicine have complained that they spend more time troubleshooting IT than they do seeing the patient.
Curogram allows for an efficient workflow where nurses and MAs deal with all the pre- and post-visit technicalities. Doctors can focus their time on the actual consultation and see more patients every day.
Workflows are important for staff too. Without an all-encompassing solution, they’d have to call patients to remind them about their visits, somehow collect intake documents remotely from patients, manually send visit links, fax or mail patients important documents, and find a way to create a system out of chaos.
Your staff might even be forced to use their personal phones to communicate with patients. This is not only risky and non-compliant, but it can be annoying to your employees as they don’t want patients having their personal cell phone numbers.
With Curogram, staff are able to do everything from a single platform, such as automate reminders, two-way text with patients, collect intake documents, and send documents safely, etc.
All the loose ends of solutions not created for telemedicine and telehealth purposes could lead to a significant drop in your revenue. Dissatisfied patients will leave, those who find the solution difficult to use will give up, and bad reviews will hurt your reputation. Your doctors will see fewer patients. Your staff will be stretched and not as efficient as usual. All of these things will slash your revenue in the long haul.
Curogram makes your staff more efficient. It allows your doctors to see more patients, and patients will be more satisfied with a service similar to what they experience in person. Curogram’s smart reminders have helped clients reduce no-shows by 75%, and Curogram’s two way texting has helped clients reduce phone calls by 50%, increasing client revenue and reducing client costs.
Your staff are not used to working remotely. You should make their mental health your top priority by organizing one-on-ones, happy hours, and similar get-togethers, as well as allowing them to discuss any issues they may be experiencing freely.
If your staff are required to use several different apps and communicate with patients across many different channels, the transition to remote work will be even more stressful. Curogram’s end-to-end communication platform integrated with your practice management system reduces staff workload and stress, making remote work much more efficient and manageable.
","status":"publish","position":0},{"id":"5fb2f7892514f93d583a8139","slug":"is-facetime-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is FaceTime HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"FaceTime is Apple’s proprietary app primarily used for video calling, but audio calls are also an option. It is available for iOS and Mac devices, so you can use it on your:
Due to the app’s popularity and widespread use, many are wondering if FaceTime can be utilized by healthcare providers for online appointments with patients. To answer that question, we first need to see if the app is HIPAA compliant and what that means for medical professionals.
As a HIPAA covered entity, if you need to communicate protected health information (PHI) via a channel, that channel’s provider is considered your business associate (BA).
A BA needs to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) with you. This contract ensures that your HIPAA-defined responsibilities for protecting and securing electronic PHI are transferred to your BA as well. In other words, the agreement guarantees that your BA will also adhere to the HIPAA Rules in order to protect sensitive patient data.
Apple doesn’t state anywhere that they would enter into a BAA for FaceTime with anyone. This is not surprising. Most providers won’t sign a BAA for consumer apps because they know these are risky and difficult to control, no matter what kind of protection they use. Enterprise apps are different in this respect since they are aimed at business entities rather than individuals.
FaceTime communication is protected with end-to-end encryption, which means only end-users of the app have access to it, and all data is secure during transit. This is one of HIPAA requirements, but there’s also a rule that requires a BA to have access controls in place.
Once you set up FaceTime, there are no access and authentication controls whatsoever. Anyone can open the app on your device since no password is required. This might not be relevant since they would only be able to see your call history, but this is still one of HIPAA-required safeguards.
Even if FaceTime satisfied all the HIPAA requirements and had all the required safeguards in place, it couldn’t be made HIPAA compliant. If Apple is unwilling to sign a BAA, the app can’t be considered compliant in the eyes of the law.
Even though the app is not HIPAA compliant, it can be used during the coronavirus national emergency. The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a temporary regulation that allows healthcare providers to use non-compliant communication platforms during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
This was done in an effort to make healthcare services available to everyone online, especially to the older population who are not digital natives and might have trouble using technology.
We understand what makes you consider FaceTime for telehealth purposes in this light. Three factors make it a tempting solution:
You won’t have to spend a dime on this app if you own an Apple device as FaceTime is Apple’s proprietary app. This might seem like a good thing because you’ll save money you’d have to pay for a monthly subscription if you opted for another solution. The truth is FaceTime may lose you a lot of money in the long run since it doesn’t offer the functionality that healthcare-specific platforms do.
Most Apple device users are familiar with the app and have already “FaceTimed” at least once. You might believe that this familiarity with the app will reassure your patients and appeal to those less tech-savvy among them. Using a consumer app such as FaceTime could also make you appear less professional. You can find a solution that is both professional and patient-friendly.
Mac and iOS device users know how easy it is to use FaceTime. You open the app, find the desired contact, and tap the video or audio call icon. That’s why your patients won’t have trouble using it, even the older ones.
The app still requires some setting up, though. This might be a bit difficult for your senior patients. Some of them don’t even own an iPhone or another Apple device. You can find a solution that allows you to contact your patients in ways that don’t require them to set up an app at all.
Even though you can use FaceTime during the national public health emergency, we advise against it. You won’t be able to continue using it once the emergency is over, and it can’t offer you what a healthcare-specific, fully HIPAA compliant platform can.
You can use FaceTime as a temporary solution, but it’s much better to get a platform designed with medical professionals in mind such as Curogram.
Curogram is a completely HIPAA compliant solution that can help you set up your virtual online clinic in no time. It is an all-encompassing platform that allows you to communicate with your patients using a two-way SMS texting system from your browser. Curogram can integrate with your EHR for interoperability and help you send PHI in a HIPAA-secure way.
With Curogram, your medical practice will thrive, and your patients will be fully satisfied. If you’re still considering FaceTime though, here are some problems that will make you regret choosing it:
FaceTime can be used on all Apple devices, but this is not enough. It makes it impossible for many patients who don’t own iOS or Mac devices to have an appointment with you. If a patient owns an Android phone and a Windows PC, they can’t show up for a FaceTime tele-visit.
This is undoubtedly a serious issue. Many patients will be left out, which will lead to your losing both patients and revenue. It may even result in a bunch of negative reviews for your practice, which will damage your reputation further.
Curogram is a patient-centric platform that doesn’t discriminate. Anyone can join a video appointment as they don’t have to download any apps. Patients get automated visit links that lead them straight to the appointment when they click it. It’s even easier to use than FaceTime.
Our platform also allows you to SMS text message your patients, which is a universal communication option regardless of the operative system.
This is a major downside of FaceTime. You won’t have to worry about exchanging medical documents in a HIPAA-secure way because you can’t send any files at all! This means that you’ll have to use another platform for document exchange.
If a doctor needs to look at a patient’s lab results or any other kind of medical report during the appointment, they will have to juggle between different communication channels. The same goes for the patient side.
With Curogram, you’ll be able to exchange medical documents in an easy way that doesn’t compromise PHI. You and your patients can upload documents before or after the appointment, and they will be tied to that appointment in the system. You can forward us any standard forms you wish to send, such as intake forms, and we’ll digitize them for you. Your patients will even be able to e-sign them.
Our platform also integrates with your EHR to facilitate data management and scheduling. We integrate with over 700 EHRs, and the process is done in less than 48 hours. Other providers will take up to six months to complete an integration, and FaceTime does not even have this option to begin with.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | DrChrono |
Epic | Allscripts |
Greenway | AdvancedMD |
Prime Clinical Systems | Practice Fusion |
NextGen | Kareo |
If you want your online patient visits to be as efficient as your in-person visits, you have to replicate your physical workflows online.
During a patient’s in-person visit, they are first greeted and prepared by a nurse. The doctor comes in when the patient is ready, and after the appointment, a nurse or MA comes in again to give them any further instructions or other documents.
With FaceTime, it’s impossible to mimic this process. The doctor will have no way of knowing when the nurse is done with the patient so that they can join the call unless they’re in the same room physically. The nurse would have to let the doctor know in one of the following ways:
This is impractical and can be frustrating for the patient. An alternative is to have the doctor do the onboarding too, which is a waste of time for the doctor.
With Curogram, you’ll have all the tools to transfer your doctor and staff workflows online. You can send your digitized intake forms to patients days before the appointment. This will save you a lot of time on the day of the visit.
Another useful feature we offer is a virtual waiting room. The staff and doctors will be able to see which patients are waiting for a visit. The doctor can see if a nurse is still with the patient or they need more time. This transparency allows everyone to do their job without hindrances.
If more than two people have to be present during an appointment, that can be a problem with FaceTime. Some appointments require several medical personnel present, and sometimes, doctors like to have assistants taking notes for them.
FaceTime allows for group video calls but not for all Apple devices. This imposes yet another restriction on which patients can have a virtual visit with you. Group call limitations also mean that your staff needs to have state-of-the-art Apple devices.
You can bypass all these technical issues by using Curogram. Our platform allows you to have multiple people present at the appointment without experiencing any problems and limitations.
Curogram | FaceTime | |
EHR integration | Yes | No |
Advanced waiting room management tools | Yes | No |
Secure document transfer | Yes | No |
In-person workflows | Yes | No |
Multi-provider appointments | Yes | No |
One survey shows that clinician adoption of telehealth increased by 340% in 2019 alone. The COVID-19 global pandemic made the adoption rate even steeper in 2020 as more and more people turned online for healthcare services.
If you’re just starting out with telemedicine, Curogram is the perfect platform for you. It will make your transition smooth by offering numerous features other solutions don’t have. Here’s what makes our platform stand out in the crowd:
Even the least tech-savvy patients will find it easy to access a virtual visit with Curogram. There are no app download requirements that complicate things. When a patient schedules an appointment, they receive a visit link. All they have to do is click the link to join the waiting room. There are no room codes or similar passwords to enter.
Doctors will love the platform as it will help them focus their time on seeing patients. They won’t have to waste time onboarding patients themselves. They can transition from appointment to appointment in minutes as patients will come ready and staff will take care of all the technicalities. The integration with your EHR will spare them double data entry as it will sync visits with it.
Curogram lets you send hipaa compliant SMS messages to your patients directly from the web dashboard. You get a local phone number without needing to have a dedicated business device. Whoever among your staff texts a patient, the patient will receive the message from your unique number.
You can send smart appointment reminders that can be customized for the visit type, sending time, and more. Reminders are essential in telemedicine because people are much more likely to forget an online appointment than a physical one. You can also save template texts for answering frequently asked questions.
It’s important to note that these are two-way SMS messages that your patients can reply to. This is much better than generic one-way notifications because your patients can text you back instead of wasting theirs and your time by calling. Our SMS messaging system has slashed some of our clients’ call volume in half.
Remote work means your staff needs to have a secure way to communicate internally. If you don’t provide them with one, they’ll end up using WhatsApp, Messenger, and similar platforms. This is bad news for three reasons:
With Curogram, you can make group chats where your employees can communicate about work-related things or anything else. They can also exchange patient data using the platform in a completely HIPAA-secure way as all communication is encrypted.
Our platform is super flexible regarding communication. While chatting with patients, they can forward each other patients’ messages and involve their colleagues in these chats.
Starting out remote work can be challenging, especially for healthcare providers. Choosing an inadequate consumer app such as FaceTime can make it even harder for everyone. Here are three problems you might experience in the beginning:
Remember that the transition is not only difficult for you but also for your patients. If they have problems using your telemedicine solution, they will give up on the appointment altogether. You also need to be mindful of the fact that patients need reminders closer to the appointment. If they are immersed in another activity, they can easily forget about the visit and never show up.
You can set up Curogram’s smart reminders to be sent to patients 15 or 30 minutes before the visit automatically. Curogram is currently sending 500,000 reminders a month and reducing no-shows by 75%.
Your employees will need time to adjust to their new work environment. You can help them out by fostering a close-knit community via your telemedicine platform and letting them know that they can ask for help if they need it. You may also consider establishing remote work policies that will help them better organize their workstation at home.
Doctors can typically see up to 40 patients a day. This number tends to drop to only a couple of patients when a clinic adopts an inappropriate telemedicine platform. If you have fewer patients, your revenue will drop significantly.
Curogram’s support of staff and doctors’ workflows will make the visits more efficient. Patients will come prepared, and doctors won’t have to spend more than 15 minutes per visit. This will allow them to see as many patients as they would be able to in person, if not more.
Telemedicine is becoming increasingly popular, with healthcare providers and patients embracing it in every corner of the world. There are many advantages to telehealth, and it is no wonder that numerous medical professionals, from small practices to major institutions, incorporate it into their existing systems.
Remote care is not a new idea. In one form or another, telemedicine has been around for decades. The possibility of connecting so quickly and easily with practitioners and specialists from remote locations arose recently. The development of the Internet and advanced digital technologies propelled telehealth to stardom.
Reshaping the healthcare system in the U.S. is much needed, and telemedicine may be the solution to many problems we are facing in medical practice. While some states have been diligent in developing the practice and taking advantage of what it has to offer, others took a pretty conservative approach. With the COVID-19 outbreak, it seems that we need a unified stance on telehealth, as it is the only way to have a swift and efficient reaction to a major national health crisis.
Telemedicine is the exchange of medical information via electronic communication channels and digital technology for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of the patient. The recipient and the provider of care are in remote locations. The patient's location is usually called the originating site, while the doctor's location is called the distant site.
Telemedicine has many aspects and can serve various purposes during the treatment. Some of the most common forms of telemedicine are:
| Type of Service | Definition | Example |
| Live Video Calls | Real-time video chat between a health provider and a patient | A medical consultation through a two-way, interactive video communication channel |
| Store-and-Forward | Use of electronic communication channels to transmit the recorded health history (both digital images and documents) | A physician sending scans images, blood test results, photos of skin conditions to an evaluation by a specialist |
| Remote Patient Monitoring | Transmission of medical data collected through a special electronic device to a doctor in a remote location | Wearing Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-enabled devices that can report patient activity in real-time(e.g., heart rate) |
| Mobile Health | Use of mobile devices (phones and tablets) for medical purposes | Sending appointment notifications or reminders regarding medication as emails or text messages |
When we talk about live telemedicine, we refer to the use of interactive, two-way video and audio communication to exchange the information between the doctor and the patient who are in remote locations.
This aspect of the practice is what revolutionized the delivery of healthcare because it offered an alternative to the traditional visit to a physician. Live telemedicine opened new possibilities when it comes to both primary and specialty care.
The store-and-forward technology is one of the oldest aspects of telemedicine. Exchanging medical data through telecommunication began a long time ago. With the rapid development of digital technology, this exchange became safer, quicker, and more precise.
Sending lab test results, scan images, or photos of skin conditions can happen in real-time now, and many medical professionals are using store-and-forward to improve the efficiency of the treatment.
Remote patient monitoring is a practical model in which the data collected from the patient can be transmitted to the healthcare provider in real-time from any location. It usually includes medical devices with a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection that automatically send information.
Heart-rate or blood-sugar monitors are some of the devices that the patients wear, while their doctors can observe the changes and react in case of emergency. Remote patient monitoring can be used even with more complicated medical equipment, such as dialysis machines.
Mobile health takes advantage of smart mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, to help in organizing the treatment and therapy. Healthcare providers can send appointment reminders or alert the patients that it is time to take medication.
Mobile health is essential in making the therapy efficient and assisting the patient in case of complicated schedules or demanding treatment requirements. When timing is a crucial element of the treatment, mobile health proved to be a life-saver.
Telehealth and telemedicine are overlapping terms that cause confusion among medical professionals and patients. There is no official distinction between them on the federal or international level. It is upon each jurisdiction to offer its definition of these two words.
Most of the states view telemedicine and telehealth as synonyms. Even if one of them appears more often in the legal documents, it is not obligatory to use it to describe the practice of remote care.
In some legislations, the distinction does exist. Telemedicine is usually restricted to clinical services, while telehealth is a broader term that incorporates healthcare education and disease prevention.
The practitioners should always comply with the definition and the differentiation of the terms on the originating site. The location of the patient is what determines the rules in telemedicine. Providers must follow the guidelines, recommendations, and abide by the laws of the state or country where the recipient resides at the time of the treatment.
Telemedicine offers many advantages to providers, patients, and the entire healthcare system. Although it won't be possible to replace the traditional practice soon, telehealth is a useful and practical model that helps enhance the scope and quality of patient care.
It is essential to understand that telehealth is not an alternative form of medicine, but a different model of practice that aims to provide the same thing as traditional healthcare. The application of technology is just an additional tool that is supposed to upgrade the diagnostic and treatment.
Telemedicine became a popular model among patients. Some studies show that a considerable number of patients are willing to try telehealth, and the ones that did are glad to continue using it. The main reasons are:
People living in remote areas have a hard time accessing adequate medical care. The geographic location can sometimes make a difference between life and death. Telemedicine democratized healthcare, allowing patients from all over the world to gain access to superb care. All they need now is a stable internet connection.
But it is not just the location that became irrelevant with the rise of telehealth. It is the age and the mobility of the patient that can cause a problem for reaching adequate medical professionals and getting the right treatment. With telemedicine, patients have the opportunity to:
One of the most talked-about benefits of telehealth among the patients is the reduction of costs. While the costs of the treatment remain the same for in-person and telemedicine practice, the secondary costs are significantly reduced in remote care.
There are many things to consider before making a doctor's appointment, especially for patients who are living in remote or rural regions. Travel time, childcare, or being absent from work are only some of the issues that can prevent a person in need to seek help on time.
With telehealth, a patient can:
Long waiting hours have always been a problem in clinics and hospitals. With the coronavirus outbreak, it became evident how not only boring but also dangerous spending too much time in overcrowded waiting rooms can be.
Exposure to infectious diseases is particularly problematic for elderly patients and people with weak immune systems. Telemedicine can prevent unnecessary risks. The patients can connect with their physicians remotely and make in-person visits only when they are needed.
Healthcare providers can benefit immensely from telemedicine. Whether it will be an additional model of delivery or a separate practice, the advantages are significant. The practitioners can opt to incorporate certain aspects of telehealth into their existing practice depending on the needs of their patients and the type of service they wish to provide.
The direct benefits or remote care include:
Saving money is a controversial topic in healthcare because it implies that the quality of care has to suffer for it. Telemedicine offers an opportunity to cut unnecessary costs without jeopardizing the standards of service.
Since telemedicine can serve as a triage to determine which patients need in-person appointments and which don't, the practitioners do not have to practice in huge spaces with big waiting rooms. The facilities can be used for strictly clinical purposes.
With digitalization comes an opportunity to save on non-medical personnel. Electronic health records (EHRs) have already reduced paperwork in traditional practice, but complete digital platforms can additionally be used for patient-registering, scheduling, and payment. By saving on administration, medical professionals can focus on their primary role—treating patients.
The demand for medical care is continually rising, and providers all over the world are struggling to deliver. Telehealth enables practitioners to offer additional services because communication and information exchange becomes quicker and easier.
One of the most significant advantages of telemedicine is that it allows the providers to admit more patients. Virtual visits are effective as they reduce the downtime. The time spent working can be used to its full potential.
The Curogram telemedicine platform has virtual waiting rooms and clinics that provide an excellent overview of daily schedules. The nurses can prepare patients for the encounter, and the doctors can initiate the visit as soon as the patients are ready. This feature mimics the environment of the physician’s office.
The practitioners don't have to depend on the locals to support their business, and they can boost patient traffic by admitting patients from other regions or states. Remote care allows the medical professionals to expand their working hours, or to adjust them according to the needs of the recipients.
A successful practice depends a lot on the experience of the patient. The quality of care and comfort of the recipient go hand in hand when it comes to patient satisfaction. That is why it is vital to reduce waiting hours and increase the availability of services.
Telehealth can help with it. Receiving treatment from home means that the recipient will have a more comfortable experience. Since they won't have to endure the stress of traveling and waiting, the encounter will be easier for patients. With happy patients and skilled physicians, the practice will bloom.
Using digital technology speeds up the processes and enables healthcare providers to manage time and resources effectively. It is even possible to set up a practice at home, especially for mental health and behavior specialists. This means less money spent on rent, as well as less travel time.
With virtual assistants and automated procedures, healthcare providers can allocate resources to clinical tasks and patient care. Telemedicine platforms offer numerous possibilities in terms of scheduling, registration, and coordination, so they can reduce the red tape and no-shows. For instance, Curogram’s Front Desk Desk Suite feature is an end-to-end solution that incorporates communication and practice management.
Healthcare systems are facing new challenges globally. With the ever-growing demand for care, medical professionals can barely stay afloat, let alone treat all the patients that require help. The remodeling of the U.S. system is much needed, and telehealth seems to be the perfect solution.
Some of the advantages of introducing telemedicine are:
Telemedicine is the future of medicine. The sooner our medical officials realize this fact, the better. It would be a significant boost to the outdated and inefficient system. Remote care can contribute to the overall health of the general population, as it integrates disease prevention and health education with clinical services.
With the national health crisis hitting hard, it is high time the officials took the situation seriously. We must use all available tools to fight the pandemic. The states with progressive telemedicine policies respond to the crisis much better.
Although critical cases need hospitalization and acute care, telehealth providers can help with remote patient monitoring, respirator-management, and triage. Patients affected with other illnesses can have access to medical care without being exposed to the virus. Medical workers can protect themselves by avoiding contact with numerous patients in offices and waiting rooms.
Telehealth platforms all over the country are teaming up with hospitals and other medical institutions to offer assistance in times of need. Safe and efficient testing sites can be established within 24 hours with complete software support.
Technology is a vital aspect of telehealth. The platform and communication channels are as important as the expertise of the practicing physician. Practitioners must choose telemedicine technology wisely because the legislation expects remote care providers to meet the same standards that apply to traditional practice.
One of the biggest concerns is data privacy and security. It is imperative to use a platform that provides HIPAA compliant communication and protects patient information with encryption and password protection. The technology should also offer a user-friendly interface and EHR integration.
Curogram offers patient-centric telemedicine solutions that help practices boost their productivity. Some of the benefits of opting for Curogram are:
Our platform integrates with over 700 EHRs, which minimizes the need for manual or double entries.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
WhatsApp Messenger, or WhatsApp for short, is a communication platform owned by Facebook that allows for sending text and voice messages and making voice and video calls. You can use it to share various media, such as images, documents, locations, and more.
Since the use of WhatsApp is extremely widespread, many are wondering if it is secure enough to be utilized in healthcare. As any other communication app used to transfer protected health information (PHI), it needs to be HIPAA compliant.
If it’s used for transferring electronic PHI, WhatsApp is legally considered a business associate (BA) of a healthcare provider employing it. In order to be seen as HIPAA compliant, a BA needs to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) with the HIPAA covered entity (the healthcare provider). This agreement would outline all the safeguards that need to be put in place in order to ensure the protection of PHI.
App owners are highly unlikely to enter into a BAA over a consumer app. WhatsApp is a consumer app, and there are no indications anywhere that Facebook would sign a BAA with anyone for it. This fact alone makes WhatsApp non-HIPAA compliant by default.
One of the major features that make medical professionals consider WhatsApp is its end-to-end encryption of all communication. This is a great security feature that allows only the sender and receiver to see the transferred data. The problem is that there are no access and authentication controls in place to prevent unauthorized app access.
Encryption is useless if anyone can take an MA’s phone, open their WhatsApp freely, and view the sent content. Once you install the app on your device, it doesn’t require you to enter a password to open it. It is always accessible. This constitutes a severe violation of the HIPAA Security Rule.
We can safely conclude that, due to its security shortcomings and Facebook’s unwillingness to enter into a BAA, WhatsApp is not HIPAA compliant and should be avoided by healthcare providers.
Instead of relying on consumer apps such as WhatsApp just because they are familiar and free, you should turn to a messaging platform designed for use in healthcare. Curogram is a web-based healthcare messaging app and telemedicine solution that is entirely HIPAA compliant.
Beyond HIPAA compliant texting ,our platform provides features that automate many time-wasting front desk tasks, improve staff efficiencies, and increase customer satisfaction. Curogram allows you to set up a virtual clinic and have online appointments with your patients.
As a medical provider, you’ll encounter various problems using WhatsApp as your go-to messaging platform. Some of them include the following:
Your communication platform should be able to integrate with your EHR. WhatsApp doesn’t have this ability, and your staff will have to coordinate information between the two platforms. This means having to enter all the relevant data twice, which leaves much room for error. You can quickly synchronize consultation from your EHR, which means that you only have to enter appointments once! Patients will get text and email reminders with the video chat links without any work from your staff.
Curogram integrates with over 700 EHRs so that you can have all information neatly organized and manage a single schedule. We will integrate with your EHR in less than 48 hours due to our proprietary technology, whereas other solutions might take months.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
DrChrono | Allscripts |
Practice Fusion | Epic |
Kareo | Athena |
Greenway | AdvancedMD |
Prime Clinical Systems | eClinicalWorks |
In order to communicate with patients via WhatsApp, your staff will have to use their personal numbers. Another option is to have a dedicated mobile device with a business mobile phone number.
Both these option are highly impractical for the following reasons:
Curogram gets you a business phone number that you can use to text patients form a web-based platform. You can also download the Curogram app on your phone and message patients from there. Patients do not need to download anything. They’ll receive your messages as an SMS text message.
You get a centralized platform for communication where you can see all chats and chat histories. Your staff will be delighted that their personal phones won’t be cluttered with work-related data and contacts.
Appointment reminders are essential, especially if you practice telemedicine. They can reduce the number of no-shows and last-minute cancellations due to people forgetting about their appointments. Online consultations are easy to forget. Your patients might get carried away, and the appointment will completely slip their mind in seconds.
WhatsApp doesn’t integrate with your schedule, so it can’t send appointment confirmations and reminders automatically. Your staff would have to text or call everyone individually, which is inefficient and time-consuming.
Curogram can send two-way SMS auto-reminders to your patients. This means that patients can respond to these and have a real person answer to any follow-up questions. Reminders can be customized based on sending times, appointment types, and more.
Patients prefer text-based communication as it’s more efficient and takes less time than calling and waiting on hold. Moreover, SMS text messages are the first to pop up on your patients’ phones, as they are not tied to any app that might have notifications turned off.
Templates can save your staff a lot of time. There are many messages that they have to send over and over again and many questions they have to answer repeatedly. That’s why a repertoire of template texts can be a real time-saver.
WhatsApp doesn’t provide you with the option to create and save templates. Your staff will have to type the same thing again and again. The best you can do in WhatsApp is to perform a chat search, copy-paste the text, and adjust it for a new patient. This can lead to mistakes and PHI accidentally being shared with other patients.
With Curogram, you can create templates for frequently sent messages or answers to frequently asked questions. These will be only a click away whenever you or your staff may need them.
Online reviews and ratings can make or break you. A bad review is notoriously difficult to convert into a positive one, and it has a lot of impact on how people perceive your practice. Your platform for communicating with patients should have some kind of a reputation management feature to help you reap five-star ratings.
If you use WhatsApp, all you’ll be able to do is pester your patients to go online, find your practice, and rate it on Google or Yelp. This can seem pushy, and it’s often a lot of work for the patient.
With Curogram, you can avoid this trap and automate five-star ratings by satisfied patients. Patients get simple one-line surveys whose goal is to establish if they’re happy with your service. If they are, they’ll get a request for a five-star rating. All they have to do is click it, and voila—you get an easy positive rating!
Even if WhatsApp can be used for text messaging with your patients, you should avoid it completely when it comes to telemedicine sessions. WhatsApp does have video and voice calling features, but they are basic and can only be used on mobile devices.
WhatsApp Web doesn’t support video and voice calling features yet, which means you and your patients would have to talk while trying to keep your phones steady. There’s no way to view anything else on your device, like important patient documents, while having a video meeting. Even among non-HIPAA compliant solutions, you can find better ones for online visits.
Curogram’s telemedicine solution gives a full office experience to both you and your patients. It allows you to replicate your natural workflows where nurses and MAs prepare the patient before the doctor takes over.
Our platform offers a virtual waiting room where you can see who’s in and if they’re ready. It facilitates sending medical documents, including secure web-based intake forms and visit summaries straight from the EHR, and has many other helpful features.
Curogram | ||
Local business text number to use from the web | Yes | No |
EHR integration | Yes | No |
Automated reminders | Yes | No |
Advanced Waiting Room Management Tools | Yes | No |
Patient Intake Forms and Payment Requests | Yes | No |
Adequate telemedicine solution | Yes | No |
If you’re looking for more than a communication platform, WhatsApp certainly won’t do. You need a video conferencing tool that can help you transition online smoothly and host simple and efficient video appointments. Your telemedicine solution should have the following features:
You need a solution that’s as easy to use as WhatsApp or even easier. Your older patients who are not so tech-savvy and don’t have WhatsApp might not even own smartphones, so downloading a phone app is not an option for them.
With Curogram, you can send auto-generated links to patients. All they have to do to get to the appointment is click the link. There are no downloads, special passwords, or room codes to enter. When they click the link, they’ll join the virtual waiting room where a nurse or an MA will help them prepare. Once they’re ready, the doctor will take over, and after the consultation, a nurse will give them any post-visit instructions and documents they might need.
As you can see, Curogram mimics the workflows everyone’s already used to—including doctors, nurses, and patients. This way, you achieve maximum efficiency, and no one is stuck doing anything that’s not their job.
This is something you can’t achieve with WhatsApp. It doesn’t have waiting rooms and, once an MA calls the patient (or the patient calls them), doctors and staff can’t go in and out of the meeting without ending the call. This means that doctors will be stuck with unprepared patients, trying to figure out how to onboard them and wasting precious time.
As we have mentioned, WhatsApp offers end-to-end chat encryption but doesn’t provide proper access controls and a centralized platform. This means electronic PHI could easily get compromised.
Curogram provides a platform where you can keep track of all communication threads in one place. From this web-based platform, you can send SMS text messages. It’s important to note that Curogram also offers the only mobile patient messaging solution that is fully HIPAA compliant.
WhatsApp group chats for staff are fine, but they can get lost in a sea of other WhatsApp groups and chats. When you’re at work, you want to filter out any disturbances, and WhatsApp can be full of these. Not being able to mute this app while working because you might receive some work-related info can be terrible for some. Non-work-related chats could easily distract you even if you mute them.
As your work platform, Curogram allows you to create group chats for your staff where they can discuss anything. This is also a much more secure way to exchange sensitive patient data than a consumer app since PHI won’t end up on your staff’s personal devices.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued a Notification of Enforcement Discretion. This regulation allows the use of non-HIPAA compliant remote communication technologies during the coronavirus emergency among healthcare providers.
OCR made this temporary regulation to help medical providers reach everyone easily wherever they are during the public health crisis. This regulatory body will exercise discretion and won’t impose penalties for using non-HIPAA compliant communication solutions for as long as the public health emergency lasts.
Even though you can use WhatsApp during the COVID-19 public health crisis, we advise against it for a number of reasons:
If you’re just starting out with telemedicine, the transition is bound to be bumpy. Everyone will be stressed out—patients, doctors, staff. You’ll be even more stressed if you decide to use an inadequate app like WhatsApp for telemedicine purposes. Here are three challenges you might experience:
A doctor can see up to 40 patients a day in person. This number is bound to decrease for online visits, especially at the beginning. A solution that doesn’t allow for transferring smooth doctors and nurses workflows online will take its toll.
If you retain this steady flow online, doctors can go in and out of appointments without hindrances and be able to see more patients. Curogram can help you make that happen with its tools designed specifically for healthcare professionals.
For accountants, writers, and other computer-bound professionals, it doesn’t make much difference whether they’re working from home or office. For medical workers, it makes all the difference. They will need some time to adjust, and you can help them in that by:
Supporting your employees is one of the main reasons why you need a staff communication platform.
If doctors have to waste time figuring out technical issues, they’ll spend more time on each patient, which will lead to fewer patients altogether. If you use a solution that patients find hard to access, they might just give up. That is another loss for your practice.
If you fail to remind your patients about their telehealth appointments, you’ll lose even more of them because they might get distracted and forget. With Curogram’s smart appointment reminders, you can reduce the number of no-shows by more than 75%. Not utilizing this smart feature means leaving serious money on the table.
","status":"publish","position":1},{"id":"5fea3c8ffdb40271d8f1fd86","slug":"telehealth-mental-health","title":"Telehealth Mental Health","type":"public","category":{"id":"5f5fbe3f510e22c2f11160bc","title":"Telehealth Regulations"},"content":"Telemedicine is a fast-growing segment of the healthcare industry. With many medical professionals calling it the future of medicine, remote care brought many benefits to both patients and healthcare providers in the past decade.
Telemental health is one of the most important segments of telemedicine. Embraced by the physicians and appreciated by the recipients, it was one of the first disciplines that started using digital technology as a tool to deliver care.
Telemental health or telebehavioral health is the process of providing cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, or psychotherapy remotely through digital communication channels.
The idea is not new as remote care has been used for a while now, but the rapid technological development enabled quick and effective communication that allows the involved parties to exchange medical information in real-time.
Mental health specialists were pioneers in using digital communication to consult with patients in remote locations. The only obstacle was that the commercial apps, like Skype or Zoom, could not provide secure exchange of data. The matters of data security became a much lesser problem with advanced protection tools.
Digital telemedicine platforms, like Curogram, offer safe and easy-to-use communication tools. People started to trust that telepsychiatry and telepsychology are reliable and efficient options for receiving diagnosis and treatment. More patients are willing to engage in telemental health, as surveys show that 72% of the population would use this model for mental health and behavioral treatments.
Telehealth is a broad term that offers a variety of services. Depending on the patient or the condition, telemedicine providers can utilize one or more of them to deliver adequate care. The most prominent ones are:
Telemental health care benefits the most from live telemedicine. While other aspects are also helpful, face-to-face interaction is essential in the diagnosis and treatment of behavioral and mental health issues. Check out our article on how telemedicine works to get a better understanding.
Live telemedicine is what revolutionized healthcare as it offered an alternative to a traditional in-person visit. It utilizes secure video conferencing for healthcare delivery. Mental health care relies on conversation as its primary tool for diagnosis, treatment, and therapy, so live telemedicine is not that different from the traditional session.
Store-and-forward technology is one of the oldest remote care tools. With modern technology, it became faster and more efficient. It is primarily used for exchange of test results, scan images, and photos. In telemental health therapy, providers mostly use it for peer-to-peer consultations.
Remote patient monitoring is gaining momentum in telemedicine, mainly due to the technological improvements that allow advanced techniques in observing patients. Even complicated procedures like dialysis machine operation and respirator management are now possible. Telemental health is yet to incorporate the advantages of remote patient monitoring, although observing behavioral patterns over video is in use.
Another useful tool is mobile health, which is a bit underused in other branches of telemedicine. Communicating with patients on mobile devices proved to be handy for mental health specialists. They can provide reading material and video tutorials, which are immensely beneficial in dealing with emotional and cognitive issues.
Telemedicine can help with many issues that the healthcare industry is facing today. The U.S. healthcare system is inefficient despite the enormous funds being designated to it. Remote care appears to be an excellent solution for many problems in delivering adequate care to all patients.
Among many benefits of telemedicine, these are the most evident:
With the above advantages, it is safe to say that telehealth is the next big thing in medicine. Although it will never be able to replace traditional delivery entirely, there is an increasing number of treatments and conditions that can be dealt with remotely.
Most critics and opponents of telemedicine are concerned with the lack of proper physical examination in telehealth encounters. While it can serve as triage in most cases, telemedicine does have its limitations when it comes to the complete evaluation of the patient.
Telemental health escapes such criticism because it uses conversation as a method of delivery and does not require a physical examination. As a perfect candidate for this particular model, telemental health was the first to start applying remote care and virtual visits in practice. There are four primary advantages of using telemedicine in mental health care:
The US has been fighting the shortage of mental health specialists for a while. The question remains if it is the absence of interest for the profession or the rapid increase in mental and emotional problems in the population that is causing the shortage.
Whatever the case is, an alarming number of Americans live in areas affected by the shortage of mental health professionals. This information becomes even more disturbing when combined with the fact that every fifth U.S. citizen experiences mental health issues at least once in their life.
More than half of those affected do not get proper treatment. It is no wonder that the suicide rate increased significantly in the last decade. What seems to be missing is the early diagnosis and treatment that would help in preventing these issues from escalating.
With telemedicine coming to the rescue, the patients don’t have to rely on local medical professionals for help and therapy. Telehealth providers from all over the country can jump in and offer assistance to local mental health specialists, or take over the patients entirely.
The continuity of care and a strong doctor-patient relationship is essential for the successful treatment of mental and behavioral problems. With remote care, patients can stick to the provider and therapy that they trust and benefit from.
Although mental illnesses are nothing to be ashamed of, most people still experience judgment and even rejection in their communities. Even common issues like anxiety and depression that affect almost every person at some point in their lives are frowned upon.
The stigma causes many patients to hide their problems, or to try to deal with them by denial and self-medication. It’s apparent how counterproductive or dangerous this can be. Neglecting these issues can have disastrous effects on the patient, so it is vital to get help as soon as possible.
Telehealth allows patients to receive mental health treatments at home. This helps them to start working on their issues in privacy. Once they are feeling better, most patients get the confidence to open up about their conditions, but it is necessary to enable them to reach that state in a peaceful and trustworthy environment.
Some disorders can make it difficult to leave the house. Getting help at home, at least in the first, more acute stages of the illness, is a blessing that was unimaginable only a few years ago. Telehealth encouraged more people to seek help for their mental and behavioral problems, which helped reduce the stigma and educate the nation on the importance of mental hygiene and well-being.
The U.S. healthcare system has been dealing with the pandemic of opioid use for two decades. The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) declared a public health emergency in 2017. It seems that the rural regions are especially affected by the epidemic. They are the ones with a concerning shortage of mental health professionals as well.
HHS is trying to engage all resources available to fight the opioid addiction. Telemedicine proved to be a step in the right direction. The government is sponsoring various telehealth counseling programs that should provide help to patients in rural areas to overcome addiction.
Dealing with the opioid crisis is a complex issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach and a long-term strategy. One of the most important aspects is constant support from psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. With telemedicine, the patients can benefit from continual counseling, which is crucial for proper recovery.
Even if they are not living in areas with a shortage of medical professionals, patients can have other problems in accessing mental health care. Demanding daily schedules and mobility issues are only some of the problems that keep people from asking for much-needed help.
With the amount of stress that we are exposed to every day, mental health issues are becoming more common. Unfortunately, most people postpone seeking help until it’s almost too late. Telemedicine makes things easier. Virtual visits are excellent because they:
When it comes to mental health, prevention is crucial. With the costly services of mental health specialists, most Americans only opt for seeing a professional when things start to get out of hand. With telemedicine, it is much more affordable to ask for help before an issue turns into a problem.
Curogram offers a two-way texting feature, which enables real-time or near real-time interaction between the provider and the recipient. It is handy for appointment reminders with patients that tend to close off and distance themselves from the Internet, or for older patients that do not use apps.
Telemedicine mental health providers encourage people to start counseling in the following situations:
All of the above can have consequences on the patient’s mental health due to the amount of stress they cause. Telemental health virtual sessions can help a patient cope with these challenges instead of amending the effects of the endured and prolonged stress. The treatment can be more effective if it starts on time.
There are many ways to incorporate telemedicine into mental health practice. Providers can choose what’s the best option depending on their needs and the requirements of their patients. The most common services are:
This service is frequent in rural or remote areas. In case of an emergency, psychiatrists can diagnose and treat patients remotely. Since acute conditions need in-person supervision, available medical personnel can cooperate in the treatment under the guidance of a remote specialist.
On-demand service usually mimics the traditional psychotherapy session. The patient can access the provider directly and receive treatment from their home. It allows the patient to cut the travel time and schedule visits when convenient. It also helps avoid the stigma that accompanies even the most common mental health issues.
Primary healthcare providers can enable their patients to connect with mental health and behavioral specialists from the office or clinic. This is an effective way of treatment because it applies a multidisciplinary and integrated approach. It is often used in areas with a poor internet connection, or if patients cannot receive the treatment at home for various reasons.
Mental health telemedicine providers can use smart mobile devices for observing the patients and their behavioral patterns in real-time. It is beneficial in monitoring the emotional or cognitive issues as they happen. Remote monitoring programs are also helpful in children's behavioral therapy.
Despite reliable evidence regarding the benefits of telemental health, including the services into the insurance plans is still not a common practice. There is no federal law that would impose such inclusion, and state laws vary when it comes to telepsychiatry, telepsychology, and other related disciplines.
Medicaid and Medicare started developing their telemental health policies because of the alarming shortage of appropriate providers all over the country. Private payers are not mandated to cover telemedicine for mental health issues in most American states, although they usually do so because there is no adequate alternative in a traditional practice.
Most patients showed interest in opting for telemedicine, especially for mental health issues. Insurance coverage is still the biggest obstacle. Even in the states where telemedicine reimbursement for telemental health care is mandatory, the legislation can be difficult to grasp, so the providers can have a hard time understanding what is included in the patient’s insurance plan. Check out our article on telemedicine reimbursement by state for more information.
With the increasing numbers of suicide, stress-related disorders, and opioid addiction crisis, there is an urgent need for democratization of mental health care. Telemedicine is an efficient solution to most of these problems, so we expect the officials to react swiftly and provide an adequate response by mandating reimbursement for telemental healthcare.
Telemedicine depends a lot on technology. That is why the providers should choose the platform carefully. Reliable and easy-to-use software is the basis of telehealth practice.
Curogram offers comprehensive solutions that enable practitioners to focus on the patients. The below table shows some of the benefits of our telehealth platform.
Why opt for Curgram? | |
| Curogram has a HIPAA compliant two-way texting feature | The two-way texting feature allows you to send appointment reminders to your patients. They can reschedule the appointments easily, which allows real-time communication through secure channels. |
| Curogram offers an internal communication system with file sharing options | A secure internal messaging system allows for a quick and secure exchange of information among medical personnel. It saves time and keeps all data private. |
| Curogram mimics in-person workflows | Virtual clinics and waiting rooms imitate a doctor’s office environment from the comfort of the patient's home. |
Since the legislation does not differentiate between telemedicine and traditional practice when it comes to rules of practice, the providers must make sure that their communication channels are secure and HIPAA compliant. Doctor-patient confidentiality and patient information privacy are sacred in medical practice, and nothing less is acceptable in telehealth.
Clinical documentation is also sensitive. Telemedicine providers, including mental health specialists, are mandated to keep precise and comprehensive records on all patients that they see, not just regulars. That is why it’s essential to team up with the vendors that can help integrate the telemedicine platform with other medical software the provider is using.
One of the most important points is the integration with electronic health records (EHRs) because it can save time on double entries and allow for the better allocation of resources. Curogram offers integration with over 700 EHRs, which comes handy in reducing the administration and manual entries.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Opting for Curogram will guarantee you a reliable partner in end-to-end telemedicine solutions. We support practitioners during the transition every step of the way. With us, the providers can be sure that the technology is secure and efficient, and that their patients will be safe and satisfied. Start your free trial now and check out all the fantastic features!
","status":"publish","position":1},{"id":"5fe3aec3fdb402cb60f1fd7d","slug":"benefits-of-telehealth","title":"Benefits of Telehealth","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fdd02e75dfe8c43efac3d77","title":"Telemedicine"},"content":"
Technology has transformed our lives in more ways than one. We rely on the Internet for instant entertainment, shopping for goods and services without leaving the house, and staying in touch with friends and family all over the globe.
We often turn to Google for answers to all types of questions — from where to eat out in the city to what medical condition the symptoms we’re experiencing are associated with. While the Internet is undoubtedly an incredible tool, at times, people forget that Google is not a licensed physician.
Self-diagnosis, based on the information you find online, often does more harm than good. A wrong interpretation of the symptoms and self-medication may exacerbate the problem and complicate the medical condition further. Still, there are times where an in-person visit to the doctor’s office is difficult due to the distance, limited patient mobility, or various other factors.
With limited accessibility to healthcare, especially in rural areas, and the shortage of healthcare professionals and specialists, getting the necessary medical care can be quite challenging. Medical professionals all over the world have recognized the possibilities of the Internet and have embraced modern technology to deliver healthcare services remotely.
Thanks to the advancement of telehealth, patients can now receive medical services without having to leave their homes. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what telehealth is, how it works, and what the main advantages it offers to both doctors and patients are.
There is no universal definition of telehealth. Different states in the U.S. and their respective medical boards define the term in half a dozen different ways. That said, there are a few characteristics of telehealth that remain true regardless of the wording of a particular law or policy.
The main aspects of telehealth are that it’s the practice of delivering healthcare services to patients remotely through the use of telecommunication technology. This is typically done through live, two-way video communication platforms, but there are a few states that also include audio-only (e.g., telephone calls) communication into their definition of telehealth.
Telehealth modalities | |
| Video conferencing | Communication between a medical professional at a distant site and a patient at an originating site, using an interactive, live, two-way video platform |
| Store-and-forward technology | Transmission of medical information between two healthcare providers |
| Remote patient monitoring (RPM) | Leveraging hardware and software to record and transmit a patient’s medical information from an originating site to a distant site |
There’s also the question of what types of medical services can be delivered via telehealth? To answer that question, we must introduce another, fairly similar term — telemedicine. Both refer to remote healthcare services, and the two are often used interchangeably. There is one major difference between the two terms, however.
While telemedicine often refers to examination, diagnosis, and treatment, telehealth is commonly associated with doctor-patient consultations and encompasses a wider range of healthcare services.
Telehealth today is often used to describe an array of diagnosis, management, healthcare education, remote patient monitoring, and various other fields of remote healthcare.
This includes, but isn’t limited to:
At its core, telehealth pertains more to remote healthcare services rendered to patients with preexisting medical conditions, continuous monitoring and management of those conditions, and health education. It is often used to facilitate receiving medical care after the patients have already been examined, evaluated, and diagnosed in an in-person setting.
When most people think about the advantages of telehealth, the first thing that comes to mind is the accessibility of health care.
While this is the most obvious advantage of telehealth, there are many more benefits the remote delivery of healthcare services provides to both patients and medical professionals.
All of the benefits telehealth provides to patients can fall into two categories:
When receiving medical care via telehealth, the distance between the patient’s home and the doctor’s office is no longer a factor. This is a major concern for patients in rural areas who would otherwise have to drive or commute for several hours before reaching a medical professional.
Some medical conditions require services from a medical specialist, who may be located in a different town, or even in a different state. In these events, patients would have to spend money on travel and hotel stays.
Telehealth cuts the cost of travel, and patients don’t have to worry about figuring out where to stay if the distance between them and the doctor is so great that it requires them to spend the night in a different city. This also eliminates the potential danger of traveling in poor weather conditions.
Another big concern of patients today is that they would have to take time off work to visit a medical professional. While taking the time to rest and let your body heal is certainly advisable for a wide variety of medical conditions, we’d often put work first and our health second. Some employers don’t offer sick days, leaving the people with the difficult choice between forgoing their health and getting a smaller paycheck at the end of the month.
Given that medical bills can often be astronomical, most people put off seeking medical care until their condition becomes severe. Telehealth offers a much better alternative, allowing patients to receive the necessary medical care in minutes, without having to take an entire day or days off work.
Curogram is a telemedicine and telehealth platform designed to streamline the delivery of remote healthcare services and allow doctors and patients an easy way to communicate at a distance. With Curogram, patients can join a virtual appointment through a link they receive in an SMS and get the required medical care from licensed healthcare professionals in a matter of minutes.
Doctors and medical facilities stand to benefit a lot from embracing telehealth. By leveraging modern telecommunications solutions, healthcare professionals can offer their services to more patients in an efficient manner.
Here are the top five benefits of telehealth for medical professionals and medical facilities:
The shortage of physicians and medical specialists is becoming an increasing problem in the United States. That’s why most states have embraced telemedicine and telehealth in an attempt to expand access to medical care and allow patients to reach their primary care physicians and medical specialists regardless of their location.
One of the major impacts of telehealth for healthcare professionals is the ability to see rural patients. From a business standpoint, it makes little sense for specialists like psychologists, psychiatrists, audiologists, and dermatologists to operate in rural areas with extremely small markets. Yet the fact remains that these people require specialist services as much as patients in urban areas.
Telehealth introduces a new business model and helps medical professionals and specialists expand their patient base by allowing them to offer their services to patients in even the most remote corners of their state.
Embracing telehealth helps reduce practice overhead, given that the cost of a telehealth visit is typically way less than that of an in-person visit. The cost reduction mainly comes from diverting patients from unnecessary emergency room visits.
Expanding your offer to include remote healthcare services will inevitably make your practice more profitable. As we’ve mentioned, you’ll be able to reach a wider patient base, and patients will be way less likely to forgo a doctor’s appointment since telehealth removes distance barriers, and represents a more affordable and convenient option.
Telehealth can also provide your practice with a competitive edge, given that new, tech-savvy generations are far more likely to opt for a healthcare provider that keeps up with technological advancements and offers them to receive medical care from their desktops, phones, and tablets.
Medical facilities will also lose fewer patients to out-of-network transfers, thus retaining their revenue. Remote consultation with a specialist can help you safely determine whether a transfer to an out-of-network facility is necessary. A great example of this is a pilot project at San Diego’s North County Health Services, which shed light on the fact that 65% of specialist referrals were unnecessary when doctors had access to a telehealth consultation platform.
When implemented correctly, telehealth can help improve your practice’s workflows and increase efficiency.
By obtaining patients’ medical information in advance of the virtual visits, telehealth allows you to prioritize healthcare delivery and triage each case. Curogram automatically sends electronic patient intake forms a few days in advance of the scheduled virtual appointment.
This way, you’ll have all the necessary medical information beforehand and can organize your doctors and medical staff better, or advise in-person care if the patient’s condition necessitates a physical examination.
In addition, Curogram integrates with over 700 EHRs and saves a ton of valuable time your doctors and medical staff would otherwise have to spend on manually entering the medical information into your electronic health record.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Curogram enables you to create your virtual clinic and start seeing patients in less than 48 hours! The virtual clinics you create with Curogram are outfitted with waiting rooms. Our management tools enable your staff to quickly onboard the patient and facilitate patient check-in and check-out.
Available doctors can see each patient’s status in the waiting room and go in and out of video calls quickly, without having to spend 15 minutes per visit onboarding the patients. This allows each doctor to admit up to 40 remote patients daily, which results in a significant increase in your practice’s revenue.
In an in-person setting, no-shows can cause a significant loss of revenue. This is especially true for medical professionals and facilities rendering healthcare services to patients in rural areas. Given the fact that a six-hour drive to the doctor’s can be quite a hassle, it’s understandable why patients often opt to skip their scheduled appointment.
Still, that doesn’t solve the problem of practices struggling with idling due to a large number of no-shows. Scheduling two appointments at the same time is out of the question, yet you cannot phone a patient and tell them to come in at a moment’s notice, given the distance. If half a dozen patients don’t show up for their appointments each day, your doctors and medical staff will waste their time idling, and you’ll lose a good portion of your revenue.
How does telehealth solve this problem? While telehealth offers a lot more flexibility regarding rescheduling, enabling patients to attend a doctor’s appointments remotely doesn’t reduce no-shows by default. They might still forget that they have an appointment that day, ask to reschedule at the last minute, or simply change their mind and opt not to show up.
You’ll need a proper telehealth solution with built-in capabilities that enable you to proactively engage with your patients and adapt to changes in your calendar. Curogram allows you to create templated HIPAA compliant text messages and send out appointment reminders to your patients as SMS. They can simply respond via SMS if they need to reschedule, cancel the appointment, or if they have any inquiries.
On top of that, you can configure when and how often you want to send out reminders. You can send a few to each patient:
This way, patients have several instances where they can reschedule or cancel the appointment, giving you plenty of time to adjust your calendar and schedule a different visit at that time, ensuring maximum efficiency of your practice.
The automated reminders feature helped practices that leverage our platform to deliver telemedicine and telehealth services reduce no-shows by 75 percent!
One of the modalities of telehealth is remote patient monitoring (RPM). Modern telecommunications technology enables healthcare professionals to monitor patients with chronic health conditions remotely, giving them valuable insight into the patient’s condition at all times.
This improves RPM patient engagement between clinical visits and enables healthcare professionals to react promptly when immediate medical care is necessary. Telehealth also makes follow-ups for RPM patients easier and much more convenient, allowing them to improve the outcomes of medical care for these patients, while simultaneously cutting the costs.
Modern telehealth devices can record and report all manner of medical data without requiring the patient to stay at the medical facility, while at the same time allowing healthcare professionals to provide the necessary medical advice remotely.
Although telehealth is a great way to improve access to medical care, expand your patient base, and increase the revenue of your practice, it does come with a few potential drawbacks.
The two major concerns when embracing telehealth are:
Different states in the U.S. have vastly different regulations regarding telemedicine and telehealth. You will need to familiarize yourself with your state’s laws, rules, regulations, and policies regarding remote healthcare delivery before you embrace telehealth.
We’ve written detailed articles providing a summary of telemedicine and telehealth laws for each state, and we wholeheartedly recommend checking out the one for the state you’re in.
The crucial questions you’ll need to answer before you get started with telehealth are:
Another crucial thing to keep in mind is that you must comply with HIPAA Rules & Standards when delivering remote medical care. Given the fact that you’ll be sharing protected health information (PHI), you can’t simply use any video platform like Zoom or Skype to conduct virtual appointments. Apart from the fines for HIPAA Rules violations being astronomical, data breaches and confidentiality violations can severely damage the reputation of your practice.
That’s why we’ve made sure Curogram is fully HIPAA compliant and comes with built-in safeguards that ensure you’re practicing telehealth in a 100% secure environment. We’ve handled all the technical details, so both you and your patients can have peace of mind knowing that sensitive medical information is adequately protected.
Telehealth relies on a number of software and hardware devices to facilitate remote patient care. This hardware and software is often costly and can require an IT expert to set up and additional training to use. There’s also the fact that some patients, especially the older generations, might have trouble using complex telehealth software.
With Curogram, all of the platform’s capabilities are at your disposal from the get-go. What’s more, you can handle everything — from doctor-patient communication and sharing medical information to providing remote care to patients — from a single dashboard.
Curogram is also incredibly easy for patients to use. They don’t have to bother with downloading apps, setting up an account, figuring out a dozen different options, or anything like that. They’ll simply receive a link to join the online appointment via SMS. After clicking the link, they’ll be redirected to your virtual waiting room, where an available doctor can initiate a video call with them once they’re ready. It doesn’t get any easier than this!
Remote medical care has proven to be a necessity in the United States. Leveraging modern telecommunications technology has dramatically improved access to health care for millions of Americans and eliminated a plethora of problems associated with the distance between doctors and patients.
If you want to make the transition to telehealth or include remote medical care in the services your practice offers — Curogram is the perfect solution.
But don’t just take our word for it —
click here to learn more about Curogram and start your free trial
, and see for yourself!
","status":"publish","position":1},{"id":"5fb40a4f2514f9500e3a8141","slug":"hipaa-compliant-is-google-voice-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Google Voice HIPAA compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"Google Voice is a cloud-based phone service. It allows you to choose a phone number that will be tied to your Google account. You can use it across many different devices to make and receive phone calls. This Google app also lets you exchange SMS messages and get voicemail.
Google Voice has a slate of convenient features and integrates with some other Google apps to offer better functionality. If you want to employ it for healthcare purposes, it needs to be HIPAA compliant.
If you want to use an app to transfer protected health information (PHI), you need to sign a contract with the provider. They are considered your business associate (BA), so you are required to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) with them. This document ensures that their app can be configured so as to adhere to all the HIPAA Rules.
As a free consumer service, Google Voice is not HIPAA compliant. You can’t use it to communicate PHI in a HIPAA-secure way as Google won’t sign a BAA for it.
Google added Google Voice as an option within their paid tool package G Suite in 2018. Since then, G Suite users have been able to purchase the app to complement others in their office set. This made Voice eligible to become HIPAA compliant.
Google will enter into a BAA for G Suite, and Voice can be included in the agreement. This is easy to achieve through a series of steps in your admin account for G Suite. You should do the following:
That’s it—you entered into a BAA with Google for your G Suite package. The problem is this doesn’t make your Google Voice automatically compliant. It only means that it can be made to adhere to the HIPAA regulations, but you have to configure it yourself. Google’s HIPAA Implementation Guide tells you how to do that. You have to obtain Google Voice licenses for the employees who handle PHI through the Voice app. You can do this from your Admin console.
When you add Voice to your G Suite package, depending on the pricing plan, you get from ten to an unlimited number of users for the app. This means that you can assign local phone numbers to as many employees as you’d like. Each user gets a unique number, but you can also interconnect them through call forwarding and multi-level auto-attendant features.
Thanks to the app’s integration with Google Calendar, your employees can sync it with their working hours. At the end of their workday, Voice will automatically switch to out-of-work mode, and they won’t receive any patient calls on their phones. Patients can still call after hours, but they will be greeted by an answering machine and will have the option of leaving a voicemail.
In practice, this means you don’t need to have dedicated business phones to communicate with patients. Your employees can connect their personal devices to their Voice-assigned numbers and use these during work hours. This way, you can have separate numbers for the front desk, billing, different specialists, different offices and locations, etc.
If you enable a multi-level auto-attendant, your patients get a phone menu when they dial your clinic. The attendant will route their calls to the person or office they are interested in reaching.
Google Voice has some advantages over an on-premises phone system, including the following:
These and other benefits make Voice a better option than other phone systems, but that still doesn’t mean it’s worth your money. The truth is you don’t need a better phone call solution—you need a messaging system.
Americans send and receive five times more messages than they make and receive calls. Patients’ preferred way of reaching you is texting, but not many physician practices offer this ability. If you want to increase your communication efficiency and patient satisfaction, you should find a HIPAA-compliant messaging solution.
Voice does offer the possibility to send SMS messages, but if you’re going to communicate PHI through your texts, you’ll need a secure patient app. This app’s primary function is calling, so its SMS feature is nothing special compared to basic SMS messaging.
You should opt for a healthcare-specific platform that can take your messaging to the next level and help you automate many tedious tasks.
Curogram is a feature-rich communication platform designed for use in healthcare. The platform incorporates a two-way messaging system and a virtual clinic solution for providing remote medical services.
One of the best things about Curogram is that it is 100% HIPAA compliant by default. Unlike with Google Voice, you don’t have to enable any special features or set it up in a specific way to make it secure for PHI transfer. We have all the HIPAA-prescribed safeguards in place to let you do your job without worrying about violating the law.
It might be the right time to leave the back-and-forth with patients over the phone in the past. Texting makes communication much easier and more accurate. If you still believe Google Voice is the right solution for your clinic, take a look at the following arguments against it:
Our platform integrates with your EHR and allows you to manage a single schedule. Since it’s in sync with your schedule, Curogram has the ability to send automated appointment reminders. The best thing about them is that they are not generic one-way texts that only provide information. Your patients can respond to these auto-generated messages and receive an answer from your staff.
Since Curogram easily integrates with your EHR, document transfer is much simpler, patients only have to click one link to join an online consultation, and MAs and nurses can prepare them before their appointment with the doctor.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
EMRlogic | Compulink |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Voice is a smart app, but your staff won’t get much out of it. It doesn’t require you to have dedicated business devices, and it allows you to forward calls, but it doesn’t save you much time. Your staff will be stuck on the phone, taking calls, listening through the voicemail, and answering all the SMS messages manually.
Curogram can help you reduce your phone call volume by 50% in about three months. This is important because phone calls take a lot of time that your staff could spend on more useful tasks. If you communicate with patients via texts, you can also increase your patient traffic as there’s no limit to how many of them can text you at the same time.
With our platform, your employees can send hipaa compliant SMS messages directly from the dashboard. Numerous features make this task much easier. One of them is the ability to create and save templates, which will be a click away whenever your staff needs them.
Just like any SMS messaging, Voice SMS texting is not suited for exchanging patient-identifying data. Even after you set up Voice to be HIPAA compliant, you should still beware of using it in an unsafe way. SMS is never a secure channel for sending sensitive information.
Texting PHI requires a HIPAA-secure app where your data won’t be compromised during the transfer. We thought about contemporary needs in remote patient care and developed a patient app for safe document transfer that they can download free of charge. Our app is the first HIPAA-secure two-way messaging solution for exchanging sensitive files with patients.
Curogram patient app is available both for iOS and Android, while your staff and doctors can either use the web dashboard or our provider app.
If most of your communication with patients unfolds over phone calls, that makes your staff much more likely to make mistakes while inputting data. It’s enough to enter a wrong appointment date into the system to disrupt your whole patient flow.
You can record incoming calls and get voicemail transcriptions with Voice if you want to double-check all the info, but imagine the amount of time that would take. A nurse or an administrative assistant would have to listen to each call twice.
Transcription from voicemail messages is not something you should rely on. There’s no AI system smart enough to understand human speech completely and not make mistakes while transcribing it.
With Curogram, you can see all your chats with patients on your dashboard. This allows you to copy/paste data or glance at a specific message instead of having to listen through a whole conversation.
Another practical thing you can do through Curogram is add online appointment booking to your website. This way, patients can schedule appointments directly on your site or through our free directory page. This is yet another feature that allows you to avoid mistakes while booking visits.
If you’re getting a communication app for your clinic, make sure it has the whole package. It isn’t only important to find the easiest and safest way to communicate with patients—your staff needs a platform where they can talk among themselves too. This is especially necessary if you have offices in multiple locations or your staff works remotely.
Voice offers no way to establish any kind of group chat for your employees, let alone a HIPAA-secure one. This option would reduce the time spent on the phone or running between offices to get information across.
Our platform lets you set up profiles for your employees, and they can use it to communicate among themselves. They can ping each other directly or create groups to discuss anything.
Your staff could make a group in WhatsApp or a similar app, but the problem arises when they have to exchange patient data. WhatsApp and other consumer apps are not HIPAA-compliant, and you don’t want PHI sitting on their personal phone. With Curogram, they can rest easy knowing that the information they’re transferring is protected.
Curogram | Google Voice | |
EHR integration | Yes | No |
Automation of tedious tasks | Yes | No |
Safe PHI transfer | Yes | No |
Accuracy | Yes | No |
Secure staff communication | Yes | No |
Since Google Voice is HIPAA-secure (as a part of G Suite for businesses), you can employ it for phone appointments. Here are some of the benefits of utilizing Voice for that purpose:
Voice is certainly a useful phone service app, but why do phone visits in the first place when you can conduct video appointments? This is the twenty-first century, and if you’re thinking about providing telemedicine services, you need to get with the times. Your competitors are using video apps, and so should you if you don’t want to lose your patient volume.
Transitioning to telemedicine can be nerve-racking (especially if you attempt to use apps like Google Voice for it). You can make it less stressful if you choose an uncomplicated video solution designed for use in healthcare. Here’s what to look for in a telemedicine app:
One of the reasons you’re considering Google Voice for telemedicine might be the fact that it’s easy for patients. Everyone can dial a number and answer a call, even older people that are not on good terms with technology. There are video solutions that are almost as simple, but they provide additional value in terms of being able to see your patient.
Curogram’s telemedicine solution is ridiculously easy for patients. They receive an auto-generated link as soon as the appointment is booked. When the visit is due, all they have to do is click the link, and a video will open in their browser.
If you want your virtual clinic to succeed, you need a solution that can help you replicate the standard workflows typical for in-person visits. This means that seeing a patient online is not as simple as having a doctor dial them directly. Such an abrupt approach to tele-visits would lead to your doctors having to work overtime and your nurses getting stuck with administrative issues.
Curogram supports the established workflows of your doctors and nurses in the following ways:
Doctor’s appointments involve a lot of documents—forms, reports, prescriptions, labs, etc. If you decide to offer telemedicine services, you’ll need to think about how to best send, receive, and store these files.
Curogram provides you with all the tools you may need to handle visit documents. Here’s what you can do with it:
Telemedicine solutions | ||
Curogram | Google Voice | |
Easy for patients | Yes | Yes |
Established workflows | Yes | No |
Secure document transfer | Yes | No |
The combination of a HIPAA-secure messaging and a telemedicine platform makes Curogram a comprehensive app for your clinic. Instead of relying on Google’s apps and outdated solutions, you could join more than 5,000 of our satisfied customers and take your medical practice to a whole new level.
Telemedicine is the fastest-growing part of the healthcare industry. When choosing a healthcare provider, most patients opt for practices that offer telehealth services. Many practitioners all over the world are looking for ways to establish a telemedicine practice or incorporate remote care into their existing businesses.
Digital technology is at the core of telemedicine, and its rapid development is what propelled telehealth into stardom. Running a reliable and successful telemedicine practice depends a lot on the platform you choose for providing remote care.
Using technology to improve medical services is not a new idea. Ever since telephone and telegraph appeared, medical professionals embraced the possibility of exchanging information remotely. What revolutionized healthcare was the live video conferencing that offered an alternative to the traditional doctor-patient encounter.
Telemedicine is the exchange of medical data via different communication channels and digital technology for the delivery of healthcare services, such as diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. The Internet was crucial in enabling web-based telehealth in the form of real-time data transmission. Physicians and their patients can meet face-to-face now, which allows them to mimic in-person interaction.
Telehealth became a perfect solution to numerous problems that the healthcare industry was facing. Remote care has many aspects, and all of them proved to be beneficial in one way or another. Interactive encounters are among the various benefits of telemedicine. Check out the table below to see what telemedicine has to offer.
| Type of Service | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Live Video Calls | A real-time video chat between a health provider and a patient | A medical consultation through a two-way video communication channel |
| Store-and-Forward | Using electronic communication channels to transmit the recorded health history (both digital images and documents) | A physician sending scans, blood test results, photos of skin conditions to a specialist for evaluation |
| Remote Patient Monitoring | Transmitting medical data collected by the patient to a doctor in a remote location | A patient wearing Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-enabled devices that report on an activity (e.g., heart rate) |
| Mobile Health | Utilizing mobile devices (phones and tablets) for medical purposes | A patient receiving notifications regarding appointments or reminders about when to take medication |
Digital technology used for live telehealth allows multiple users to join the call, so third parties, like caretakers, translators, or consulting specialists, can participate. Live telehealth is the exchange of information through secure communication channels between the provider and the recipient. You can also use it for peer-to-peer consultations and educational purposes.
Video conferencing is the essence of modern telemedicine, as it allows real-time, reliable communication. The practitioners can see and hear their patients, which enables more accurate evaluation of their condition.
Video calls are necessary as the first point-of-contact between a doctor and the patient. They are a safe way of establishing a strong physician-patient relationship, essential for responsible and effective treatment.
Store-and-forward services have been in use for quite some time, but their efficiency improved significantly with the development of digital technology. Forwarding medical data between medical professionals and patients is now happening in real-time.
Practitioners can use different communication tools to forward:
The exchange can happen between the providers and recipients or in the form of peer-to-peer consultations. In either case, communication is quicker, but more importantly, it is secure and confidential.
Wireless internet connection is what made remote patient monitoring so efficient. Wearing medical devices, such as blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar monitors, is a common practice. What’s new is that they can transmit data in real-time via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection directly to the physician.
Patients were required to monitor and write down the results before the wireless transmission was introduced. This was a fertile ground for errors, and it did not allow swift reaction in case of an emergency. Even more complicated devices, like dialysis machines, can be accessed remotely now. Remote patient monitoring is convenient for respirator management, as well.
Mobile health takes advantage of mobile communication devices to provide a safe and prompt exchange of information between physicians and patients. Since we rarely part with our phones and tablets, practitioners use telehealth software to send alerts, reminders, or other notifications in real-time.
It is an excellent way to convey important information, not only regarding the treatment but also the disease prevention or health education. Mobile health is one of the most popular aspects of telemedicine.
Telehealth will not be able to replace traditional healthcare soon. Certain conditions and procedures require in-person visits, and that is not about to change. The most significant advantage of telemedicine is that it can serve as triage and help determine which patients do need to come to the office or the hospital, and which don’t.
This reduces the number of unnecessary visits and allows medical professionals to allocate resources better. Telehealth platforms can be useful for non-emergency consultations, secure medical data exchange, and initial evaluation of patients.
Telemedicine is viewed as the future of healthcare because it:
Healthcare systems have been struggling with the above issues globally. Incorporating telemedicine into the existing practice, and developing remote care software is essential if we want to democratize healthcare. It is not only fair, but it improves the health of the general population significantly.
Practitioners offering their services via telemedicine platforms report that they witness a substantial decrease in:
People are more diligent and responsible when given the opportunity to participate in the treatment actively. Patients can inquire about their conditions in real-time and report issues as they happen. This reduces the need for costly acute care and allows proper reactions on time.
Mental health and behavior specialists were the first healthcare providers to adopt telemedicine software. Psychotherapy benefited immensely because the therapists were able to connect and talk to the patients during critical periods. Telehealth platforms came handy in suicide prevention. They remain the most popular tool in treating and preventing the escalation of mental health issues.
The coronavirus outbreak showed how inadequate our healthcare system is. Despite huge amounts of money that are poured into it every year, it is still unable to provide care and treatment to all that require help.
Telemedicine appears to be a solution to the problem. The states with progressive telehealth policies seem to respond to the pandemic better. Several things contribute to this:
Live video encounters keep both parties safe during the pandemic. Exposure to the virus is not uncommon in crowded waiting rooms and offices. The patients who don’t require hospitalization or acute care can seek help via telemedicine. This possibility is as important to people affected by COVID-19 as to the ones suffering from other illnesses.
Medical personnel can avoid unnecessary contacts, which is vital during the crisis. We are already experiencing a shortage of healthcare professionals, and endangering them even further can have serious consequences.
Some telehealth vendors are stepping up in assisting medical institutions and facilities in establishing testing sites that can allow efficient and safe triage. The communication between doctors and patients is vital during the public health crisis, so telemedicine tools are being used all the time.
Curogram is leading the way. The platform offers real-time communication in the form of two-way texting and live video chat, that allow both patients and physicians to set appointments, schedule screening, and conduct initial visits remotely.
The platform teamed with United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, to set up the first drive-thru testing site in the country. Quick and safe testing will be supported by Curograms’ software, which will take care of patient registration, scheduling, and result distribution.
With the number of infected people on the rise, it is not easy to monitor them adequately. Patients receiving treatment at home are in danger because coronavirus tends to take unpredicted turns. The patient’s condition can escalate rapidly, and it is crucial to react in time.
Telemedicine tools can help observe the patients in real-time. Physicians can support and oversee the recovery remotely, which allows them to cover more patients. In certain areas, there is a concerning shortage of available physicians, so medical professionals from other regions and states can take over the treatment.
Although it is impossible to perform intubation from distant sites, out-of-state doctors can help with respirator management. During the national health crisis, we must use all resources available to fight the virus effectively.
With the market flooded with various telemedicine vendors and tools, getting the right platform may be tricky. It is important to understand that the same standards apply to telehealth and traditional practice. This means that providers must comply with the same strict regulations and ensure the same quality of care.
To be able to do this, medical professionals need a reliable and stable platform that can support their practice. If you are about to establish a telemedicine practice or incorporate the services into your business, you should pay attention to the following:
Data privacy and security are crucial in medical practice. Failing to meet the standards can cause serious disciplinary measures and even prosecution. That is why it is utterly important to partner with vendors that can guarantee security features.
Doctor-patient confidentiality is sacred, and regardless of potential legal consequences, breaching it can ruin your practice and reputation. Make sure that the software you choose has:
Only with the above features can you be sure that the sensitive patient information is safe from third-party breaches and loss of information.
Digital communication you use for telehealth treatments must be reliable and secure. Since practitioners use different means of communication depending on the type of telemedicine service, it is vital to make sure all of them are private.
The first thing you need to check is if they are HIPAA compliant. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted in 1996, and its primary goal is to stipulate how the patient’s personal information is handled in the healthcare industry. The rules and regulations are mandatory for all healthcare providers, regardless of the model of practice.
The Curogram platform offers advanced features that support efficient and secure external and internal communication.
Free, commercial communication apps like Skype or FaceTime are not HIPAA compliant or secure enough to be used for telemedicine.
One of the most significant advantages of telemedicine is that it saves time on administration and allows for the better allocation of resources. To be able to benefit from it, you should choose a platform that integrates with other software you are using in your practice.
You should pay close attention to the following:
Curogram offers integration with over 700 EHRs, so maintaining clinical documents is quick and easy.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
|---|---|
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Patient experience is essential for a successful practice. The platform you are using should be easy to navigate. Your patients may not be tech-wizards, so make sure that the interface is not demanding or confusing to them.
One of the key elements should be the ease of access and availability of relevant information. By providing that, you can reduce unnecessary inquiries and phone calls. The user-friendly platform will attract more patients and prevent errors in scheduling or registration.
You should opt for platforms that include virtual clinics and waiting rooms. They allow you to mimic traditional workflow, and the patients seem to respond to it perfectly.
Telemedicine requires complex software solutions. The technology behind the practice needs to be updated and maintained properly. Regardless of how sophisticated the technology is, there will be a multitude of hardware and software issues that will occur.
You should choose a vendor only if they can provide regular technical support so that any problems can be solved as soon as possible, if not in real-time. It is important to receive appropriate training on all tools and apps, so you and your staff can use them effortlessly.
The most appealing aspect of the telemedicine platform tends to be the price. This is not the best reason to opt for a particular vendor. All the best telemedicine companies do not offer their services for free, although most of them offer free trials.
Trying some of them to see which one is suitable for your practice is advisable. The transition to telemedicine requires time and adjustments, so it is better to check the features before you commit to a specific vendor. You should seek long-term partnerships because switching platforms can be business-impacting and complicated.
In the table below, you can check the characteristics of some of the popular telemedicine vendors.
| HIPAA compliance | User-friendly | Technical Support | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curogram | Yes | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ |
| Medici | Yes | ★★★★★ | ★★★★ |
| Mend Software | Yes | ★★★★ | ★★★★ |
| Updox | Yes | ★★★ | ★★★★ |
| NextGen Virtual Visits | Yes | ★★★ | ★★★★ |
| Secure Telehealth | Yes | ★★★ | ★★★ |
| Synzi | Yes | ★★★ | Not available |
With exceptional features, Curogram is a comprehensive solution for your telehealth practice. Don’t hesitate and start your free trial here.
","status":"publish","position":2},{"id":"5fea3df5fdb4024ba8f1fd87","slug":"telehealth-certification","title":"Telehealth Certification","type":"public","category":{"id":"5f5fbe3f510e22c2f11160bc","title":"Telehealth Regulations"},"content":"Telehealth has reached a peak in popularity and practical application ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 took place.
To practice telehealth, though, many states require that practitioners get certified first. It’s crucial for all healthcare workers to know how to approach telemedicine and use adequate equipment, appropriate channels, and correct CPT codes.
Being that the main telehealth concern is that practitioners might not have the required equipment or know how to use it, it is no wonder that the majority of states demand that anyone who wishes to tackle telehealth gets a certification.
To have a successful start in telemedicine, you should be aware of what telehealth certification entails in the United States.
The United States is the pioneer in telehealth—with 76% of hospitals and practitioners already either partially or fully involved in telehealth. Although many would go as far as to say that the progress of telemedicine in the U.S. is slow, studies claim otherwise.
To get a better idea of how states handle telehealth certification, let’s look at the raw data:
It’s evident that cross-state licensing is one of the most problematic aspects of obtaining a telehealth certification. Each state imposes its own rules that practitioners are required to follow.
To obtain a telehealth certification, all practitioners need to meet certain requirements proposed by the state their practice is located in. As we’ve already mentioned, each state has its own rules on telehealth certification, so there is no one-size-fits-all guide on licensure demands. The majority of states have the same template, though, to which they add their own ‘twists.’ Some of the most commonly found requirements for telemedicine certification are:
It’s important to note that many are against telemedicine altogether because of the many requirements practitioners need to meet in order to practice it. The process of adopting telemedicine is often viewed as painfully slow, but we want to emphasize that it is nowhere near sluggish as it may seem. Admittedly, it takes six months to a year for a new bill to be signed into law, but that doesn’t mean telemedicine isn’t progressing daily.
In 2013, the Interstate Licensure Compact was presented as a potential solution to the ongoing issue of cross-state licensing. The Compact started being operational only four years later, though.
Nearly half of the states in the country joined the Compact by now. Knowing how helpful it is to practitioners and patients, the majority of states decided to hop on board and help those in need.
If you want to know whether your state of residence is part of the Compact, try to find it in this list:
If you were able to find the state you live in, you are eligible to practice telemedicine outside its borders. In case you didn’t find it, you will have to look up the rules on cross-state licensing for your particular state.
Although the Interstate Licensure Compact made it much easier for practitioners to obtain a telemedicine certification and practice outside their state borders, there are still certain issues that arise when applying to get a certification.
Each state has its own medical board that reviews telehealth licensure applications and gives feedback. This becomes an issue when one state’s Medical Board takes a week or two to process your application, but then some other state’s Medical Board takes three months to do the same job.
The conclusion is that you can’t rely on what you hear about other states—you need to gather some information on how your state processes applications and how long they take. Fees for telehealth certification vary just as well, so make sure to look those up during research. It’s better to learn about the fees beforehand than to get shocked when you receive the bill.
All physicians who wish to be part of the Compact need to meet certain requirements proposed by the ILC. The first step for you to be part of it is to have a full medical license that is able to serve as a declared State of Principal License, commonly known as SPL. You also need to make sure that at least one of the following options applies to you:
Once you submit your application, the SPL is going to determine whether you’re qualified to receive the license. There are a few more requirements that you need to meet, though:
The Telehealth Certification Institute was founded in 2014 with the goal of providing healthcare workers with appropriate education, training, and consultation. They have plenty of different courses that can help you get a telehealth certification with ease.
The Telemental Health Training Certificate (THTC) provided by the Telehealth Certification Institute is obtained by clinicians that complete the THTC program successfully. The course is supposed to prepare you for providing behavioral health services through telemedicine channels.
The safest and most fuss-free way of providing such services is by using Curogram. This two-way texting feature is fully HIPAA-compliant, which is the most important aspect that a channel can have in the world of telehealth.
With Curogram, all of your data will be processed at the highest security standards. We care about our users’ sensitive information, and it was one of our main goals to make the app as secure as possible.
Our platform also eliminates the bulk of tedious administrative work by integrating with your Electronic Health Record (EHR). This gives you a unique opportunity to admit more patients daily and increase your practice’s revenue.
If you want to find your own spot in telehealth, using Curogram is the best way to find success early on. Join our community of over 5,000 doctors for the most rewarding outcomes!
To obtain a THTC certificate, you are required to complete all of the following courses successfully:
Telehealth is one of the most innovative solutions to the lack of healthcare providers in underserved and rural areas. Thanks to the advancement of digital technology, telemedicine and telehealth solves one of the major issues patients are struggling with today—access to medical professionals.
Telehealth has saved thousands of lives and continues to do so daily. That’s why we encourage all practitioners to get a telemedicine certification and engage in the field as soon as possible.
Even though telemedicine is one of the most advanced answers to issues that have been around for the longest time, it does come with certain setbacks. They are mostly of legal and regulatory nature, though, so let’s see what the crucial concerns are:
All of these issues are being worked on. Some states are trying to resolve them more diligently than others, though.
With the outbreak of the pandemic, telehealth started flourishing. For the first time in many years, people are advised against going to doctors’ offices in-person. This means a lot for the overall development of telemedicine, as well as its future. Residents of the United States will keep using telemedicine instead of opting for office visits. The entire concept of telemedicine is based on convenience—patients get to stay home and still receive the help they need.
If you’re looking to get into telehealth, there won’t be a better time to do it than during the pandemic, and shortly after it stops being alarming. We predict that 50% of all patients that started using telemedicine during the virus outbreak will continue to use it frequently.
Although the global emergency had brought many concerns, we can’t deny that it benefited the evolution of telehealth. That’s why we advise you to join our community of over 5,000 practitioners and have a successful start in telehealth with the help of Curogram.
Curogram is a two-way texting and telemedicine platform. It has tons of features that will help you have an outstanding start in the world of telemedicine, in under 48 hours!
Our primary goal was to make our platform the most-fuss free and user-friendly one on the market. If you know how to perform a simple Google search, there is no doubt that you will be able to use Curogram with ease. All you need to have in order to use our platform is Internet access—it’s that simple!
One of the most important aspects of Curogram is that it lets you schedule as many appointments as you like and allows you to spend more time with your patients if you choose to do so. The platform is super flexible, so you can set up your virtual clinic to mimic the in-person workflow your staff is used to.
If you’re curious to see what Curogram can do for your practice, here are the biggest benefits our platform provides:
| Curogram supports HIPAA-compliant texting. | Ever since people started using Curogram, the number of phone calls dropped by 50%, which only proves how popular texting is. Exchanging text messages through Curogram is fully HIPAA-compliant. |
| Curogram comes with the most advanced appointment reminders. | Appointment reminders are super handy and help reduce the number of no-shows by 75%. You can set a 15–30-minute automated reminder for your patients to ensure that they show up on time. One of the main perks of telemedicine is that you don’t need to remind your patients hours and hours ahead—external factors, such as driving time, are eliminated. |
| Curogram integrates with some of the best EHRs. | Curogram integrates with over 700 of the most popular EHRs. It automatically syncs the data between the platform and your EHR, eliminating the need for double entry and removing the possibility of human error from the process. Curogram also sends Electronic Intake Forms to patients, so doctors don’t have to waste precious time on check-ins and can admit more patients daily. |
| Curogram allows you to replicate real-life workflows. | Since it was our goal to make our app as easy to get used to as possible, we’ve introduced the feature that lets you set up multiple virtual clinics, as well as waiting rooms. Your medical will have no issue transitioning from an in-person workflow to these virtual settings in no time! |
| Curogram facilitates internal communication and file sharing. | Sharing your patients’ records with your staff requires sufficient security that you don’t get with channels such as Skype. You can be at ease with Curogram, though. Feel free to communicate with your team and exchange any files you like in a secure, fully HIPAA compliant environment. |
If you’re worried that it could take you ages to set up our platform, you can rest easy. Curogram doesn’t rely on complex HL7 interfaces, so it only takes 48 hours to fully integrate with your EHR and have your virtual clinic up and running.
Our platform integrates with hundreds of different EHRs, as we’ve already mentioned. In case you’re curious to know more about that, check these ones out:
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Curogram offers a free 14-day trial, so you can check out our platform completely risk-free.
—we promise you won’t be disappointed!
","status":"publish","position":2},{"id":"5fb2fa0b2514f90be63a813c","slug":"is-efax-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is eFax HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"If you’re still relying on clunky old fax machines to exchange patient records with other offices and providers, you may be interested in Internet faxing. One of the best-known Internet faxing services is eFax.
eFax allows you to send and receive faxes online without the use of physical machines. Instead, you can send faxes from any device connected to the Internet, including computers, laptops, tablets, and phones.
Can you use eFax services in healthcare, and are they HIPAA compliant?
eFax lets you exchange faxes with your colleagues and other healthcare professionals without fax machines. All you need is an Internet connection. Everything is stored in their cloud, and you can access it whenever you want. You can make up to five user profiles per one account and send the same fax to multiple recipients at once.
There are three ways to send faxes via eFax:
An eFax account provides you with a messaging tool that allows you to send faxes using the recipient’s fax number. You can attach up to ten documents, enter the number or choose one from the existing contacts, and send. The recipient will get the documents on their fax machine.
You can use eFax to send documents directly to the recipient’s machine using your email. You need to attach the documents you wish to send. In the “To” field, you enter the recipient’s fax number followed by “@efaxsend.com” and send the email as usual.
eFax also offers a mobile app, so you can send documents from your phone on the go. You can even e-sign them directly in the app. Your recipient will receive the documents on their fax machine.
Fax machines persist in healthcare for one reason—they don’t store data. Internet faxing services do, which makes data sent this way potentially vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This is one of the worries that makes people apprehensive about using online faxing services such as eFax.
The truth is so much can go wrong with fax machines:
Online faxing is a safer option if the solution you’re using is HIPAA compliant.
eFax is a HIPAA compliant solution, which you can use to transfer your patient data securely. The safest indicator that an app adheres to HIPAA is the provider’s willingness to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA). This document is necessary for an intermediary to be considered compliant. eFax is willing to sign a BAA with you.
eFax satisfies all the obligatory HIPAA requirements, including the following:
There are appropriate mechanisms in place that allow you to control access to your cloud-based account. These include unique identification and admin rights to permit or deny access.
eFax employs the TLS protocol recommended by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). TLS ensures that your protected health information (PHI) is safe during transfer.
eFax utilizes AES 256-bit encryption, which is considered the industry standard. Your data is stored in their two redundant colocations, which are also protected by several security layers.
You can track all your data transmissions, which allows you to examine any activity taking place on your account. All your data is backed up. Each piece of document you send is stored forever so that you can access it in case of an emergency.
If you need to communicate your patients’ PHI, eFax is a secure solution, but the question is—is it the right one?
Even in its modern, Internet-based version, faxing is still outdated. It allows you to exchange documents securely, but that’s all it does. If you want to communicate to your partner what you need, you’ll need to use another channel for that. If you want to exchange PHI with your patients, you’ll also need a different platform.
Faxing is passé, and you should replace it with a solution that makes communication with patients and other providers easier and more efficient.
Curogram is a platform that allows you to communicate with anyone from a single dashboard, be it other providers, patients, or your internal staff. You can use it from your browser or the mobile app. It is 100% HIPAA compliant, and you can exchange PHI through it with anyone in a secure way.
Curogram can do for you what eFax does but much more efficiently. It also has a variety of other functions that you can’t get with a faxing service. If you still think eFax is worth your money, here are a couple of things to consider:
Integration with your EHR could save you tons of time. The lack of this option is another major disadvantage of using eFax. When receiving data, you have to enter it into your EHR manually. It would also be beneficial if you could pull out and send documents directly from the EHR.
Curogram integrates with almost any EHR there is. The best thing about it is that the integration process is done in about 48 hours, thanks to our proprietary technology. You won’t have to wait for months to sync your communication platform with your EHR, which is how long this process takes usually.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
DrChrono | eClinicalWorks |
Athena | Greenway |
Allscripts | NextGen |
Kareo | AdvancedMD |
Epic | Practice Fusion |
You can’t send faxes without a fax number. That is, if your recipient doesn’t use any kind of faxing, you can’t send them a fax. Without a physical machine or an online faxing service, the other side can’t receive the desired documents.
This limitation means that you can only use eFax to reach other providers who typically have fax machines. If you want to exchange PHI with your patients, you’ll probably have to find another way. Outside of medicine, not many people and businesses utilize faxing as there are better and faster ways to communicate. If the intended recipient doesn’t use faxing, they are unlikely to subscribe to the service or buy a machine just to be able to communicate with you.
Curogram is a twenty-first-century solution for PHI exchange that anyone can use with almost no effort. It lets you send and receive sensitive patient data in a completely secure way. You can do it from the web-based dashboard or our mobile app.
Whoever it is that needs to receive PHI from you, all they have to do is download the free mobile app and get the desired documents from you instantly. We boast the first-ever HIPAA compliant mobile app for patients.
You can easily find and contact your partners from Curogram’s partner directory. Send patient records with a click of a button and get an instant response instead of calling to confirm that the document has arrived.
eFax makes sense only when you know exactly what you’re due to receive and send. This means that if you communicate with another office on a regular basis (to get labs, for example), eFax might be an alright solution for you.
Any other situation in which you have to exchange PHI requires you and the other party to communicate what you need. This means that you have to involve another channel to get the message across. You would probably have to go through the following steps:
With Curogram, you can IM your partners or staff and get what you need immediately. You will go through the whole process faster than it would take you to finish the first step with faxing. That’s because you’ll be doing everything through one platform, without involving other channels of communication. You can even attach documents directly from your EHR.
No matter how advanced a faxing solution is, it still goes through a phone line and depends on it. If the line is busy, you’ll have to retry several times to get through and often to no avail. Busy lines can make the whole process even slower than it is already bound to be. This is one of the main reasons why faxing should be left in the past.
Our platform is Internet-based, and you don’t have to wait a ridiculous amount of time to get a document through it in a safe way. Everything is done with a couple of clicks, so no one has to waste their time.
eFax may be the best-known online faxing service, but it is also the most expensive one. For example, the eFax Plus plan starts from $16.95 per month. This is pretty pricey, considering that you only get 150 incoming and the same number of outgoing pages. For anything more, you get charged extra.
Apart from the number of pages, you also get a limit on the number of users per account. You can only connect five email addresses to it. This may be fine for some, but if you need to make the faxing service available to more people, you’ll need another account.
Considering these limitations and others we’ve explored above, it is obvious that eFax is not good value for money. For an affordable monthly subscription with Curogram, you get a feature-rich telemedicine solution and a two-way messaging platform. You can use it for HIPAA compliant messaging and set up a virtual clinic for conducting online appointments.
There’s no limit on how many documents you can send. Your staff can communicate internally, and you can reach out to your patients and partners as well.
eFax | Curogram |
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The U.S. medical system is behind the times. The lack of interoperability between clinics’ electronic records makes doctors and other medical staff rely on fax machines for communication. This can lead to issues such as jammed up or half-printed paper, which are the problems of the twentieth century.
Faxing is outdated. It shouldn’t be digitized but abandoned altogether. Online faxing is somewhat more convenient, but it’s still not a twenty-first-century solution for secure communication between medical professionals.
Here’s how healthcare providers can benefit from subscribing to Curogram:
Curogram makes it easy to communicate with other practices. You don’t need to rely on several different channels to get the message across. Instead of calling and texting to make arrangements about faxing the documents containing PHI, you can do everything from the Curogram dashboard.
If you need to receive test results from the lab or exchange other medical records with another clinic, you can find them in your partner directory on Curogram and message them from there. You can send each other files through the platform without violating the HIPAA rules. You don’t have to involve emails or clunky old machines in the transfer. This also means that your documents will all be in one place and not scattered around your office in paper.
Independent providers can band together to provide better patient care in their area. This means that a group of doctors can share a patient population in an area to make it easier for themselves and the patients to connect.
Clinics have their electronic systems, but these do not allow for active collaboration with other practices. Curogram can change that. If a group of healthcare providers connects via our platform, they get a unified system for patient care. They can refer patients to each other and exchange patient information in a safe way.
ESCOs can use Curogram to collaborate on taking care of all the Medicare patients in an area. If they coordinate their services this way, they can help reduce overall costs per Medicare patient, which can bring them substantial rewards.
If doctors collaborate, patients benefit as well. They will be able to see their entire network of healthcare providers in a single app and text them at any time. Their doctors’ mutual collaboration means they won’t have to contact each clinic individually. Whenever they have a health-related problem, they can turn to their Curogram app.
Once a patient fills out an intake form for one provider, they don’t need to do it again as their form will be saved in the system. No matter what documents they send through Curogram, they get stored in the app, and the patient can send them to another provider if necessary with a single click.
Our healthcare system suffers from interoperability issues and a lack of collaboration tools for medical professionals. The fact that various practices still run on fax machines is proof enough that we need to do more to ensure secure and efficient inter-office communication. Curogram can revolutionize the way doctors collaborate and help them work in sync to provide better patient care.
Florida got proper telehealth legislation only recently, in 2019. The state legislature had been working on the law for several years before it was passed. What hindered its enactment was a debate over payment parity, which payer organizations won in the end.
The first real attempt at getting a telehealth law in Florida happened in 2017 when a state-assigned council issued a report that proposed the definition of telehealth and its adoption. A bill was charted based on the report, but it failed to pass the committee.
The legal guidelines on telehealth and telemedicine in Florida were unsatisfactory, to say the least. Once the state lawmakers passed House Bill 23, Florida telehealth providers finally got instructions on how to use technology for patient care.
We’ll take a closer look at how Florida telemedicine law developed and what healthcare providers can and can’t do as of July 1, 2019.
Telemedicine was practiced in Florida, but providers didn’t have clear guidelines on how to do so while staying within the law. The state tried to change that in 2016 by appointing a body, the Telehealth Advisory Council, to survey healthcare providers and health insurers about the state of telehealth in Florida and submit a detailed report.
The purpose of this report was to provide insight into the established practices, further needs, and potential issues to be solved. The state legislation from 2016 that created the council also included a rough set of definitions and regulations regarding telehealth to hold the fort until a new bill arrives. The new bill was supposed to be based on the council’s findings.
In 2017, the state-appointed council came up with a report that contained a number of recommendations for improving and clarifying telehealth regulations. Among these were the following:
Soon after the report was published, Senate Bill 280 was proposed by State Senator Aaron Bean. The bill was mostly based on the council’s report. The following year, the state legislature failed to pass it, leaving both providers and insurers in the dark. The bill fell apart due to the lawmakers’ and payment organizations’ disagreement over whether payment parity for telehealth should be mandated.
The year 2019 was vital for those who practice or wish to start practicing telehealth in Florida. It’s when the state got its first comprehensive law on telemedicine. Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 23 into law in April 2019, and it came into effect in July the same year.
The bill is largely based on the 2017 Telehealth Advisory Council report. It covers five key points:
House Bill 23 is now part of the Florida Statutes as Section 456.47. We will talk about its provisions and what they mean in practice in great detail.
Telehealth is described in simple terms as the use of both synchronous and asynchronous technology by a telehealth provider to provide healthcare services. The difference between these two types of technology is in the time of information sharing. The former relays information in real-time, while the latter transmits data intermittently, i.e., with a lag.
The healthcare services that a telehealth provider can offer include:
Telehealth mostly refers to video meetings as well as other means of remote communication, excluding voice-only calls, email correspondence, and data transfer through faxing services. These activities are not prohibited, but they are not considered telehealth by the law. Why would you want to engage in them anyway when you can use a secure and practical video telehealth solution, such as our Curogram.
Before House Bill 23, the term “telemedicine” was defined in a similar way that “telehealth” is defined now. Here’s a definition by the Florida Board of Medicine:
“‘Telemedicine’ means the practice of medicine by a licensed Florida physician or physician assistant where patient care, treatment, or services are provided through the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications.”
As you can see, “telemedicine” was used to denote practices that now fall under the definition of telehealth. The difference is that the latter is described in greater detail as its definition specifies which healthcare services you can provide and which technologies you can use.
As you’ll see later, the Florida telehealth law gives a much broader definition of who can provide healthcare services, and this goes way beyond licensed Florida physicians and physician assistants.
Given the above information, we can say that the practice of telemedicine falls under the scope of telehealth. The truth is that the term “telemedicine” isn’t even used in the law anymore as the rule defining it was repealed when the current law was enacted.
Florida law allows a variety of state-licensed healthcare professionals to provide services using telehealth, and these include but are not limited to:
Individuals who are not medical professionals licensed in Florida can also practice telehealth in two possible ways:
There are several practice standards mandated by the telehealth law that practitioners need to adhere to. These are the following:
The standard of care is straightforward—a healthcare professional using telehealth only has to provide services that are within their scope of practice and, in doing so, comply with the professional standard of practice for medical professionals who see patients in person in Florida.
To put it simply—continue being a professional even when providing services remotely.
Some states have complicated requirements when it comes to establishing a provider-patient relationship. Their telehealth and telemedicine laws obligate providers to establish in-person contact with a patient before conducting a telemedicine appointment with them. This often means that doctors can treat only their existing patients.
Florida law allows doctors to evaluate patients via telehealth directly. If that evaluation is sufficient for the provider to diagnose and treat a patient, they can proceed to do so without accessing any of the patient’s medical history or examining them in person first.
This is great news for telehealth providers as their services are not limited by complicated procedures, and neither is their potential patient base.
Florida legislation limits the use of telehealth in prescribing controlled substances, which is only reasonable. There are instances in which telehealth providers can prescribe this type of medication, and these include:
Before this law was introduced, providers could only prescribe controlled substances in the first two instances described above. This is a welcome change, but you should always be careful when dealing with these kinds of drugs.
All telehealth services need to be documented in the patient’s medical record just like they would be after an in-person appointment. All medical records, including the video of the appointment and any electronic files resulting from it, are confidential.
If you opt for Curogram as your telehealth platform, you’ll have a much easier time documenting everything as it syncs with your EHR. Our app also complies with all the Florida state laws as well as federal laws, so you don’t have to worry about the confidentiality and security of your patient information.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Out-of-state providers can apply for registration with the state of Florida that would permit them to practice telehealth in Florida, i.e., to provide healthcare services to Florida patients. These practitioners would have to apply for a registration number with the Florida Department of Health.
Here are the prerequisites for obtaining out-of-state telehealth registration:
The current telehealth law has caused some worry in the Florida healthcare community as it has a loophole that out-of-state practitioners can take advantage of to avoid paying any fees to the state.
The bill initially called for a $150 fee, but Florida Statutes necessitate the existence of a separate bill that would set fees. Such a bill was introduced, but the Governor vetoed it. This left Florida without any fee rules applicable to those registering outside of the state.
As a non-Florida-based medical professional, you can provide telehealth services in some cases without registering with the Department of Health. These cases include the following:
While Florida-based telehealth providers got many benefits from the current law, insurance coverage is not one of them. The law doesn’t require healthcare plans to cover services rendered online.
The payer and the telehealth provider need to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement on the payment rates and methods. The payer organization enters into an agreement voluntarily, and reimbursement can differ greatly from that for the same services rendered in person.
This law leaves Florida without payment and coverage parity laws, which makes it the minority among the states. More than 36 states mandate coverage parity for telehealth, while more than ten require payment parity.
Florida law is favorable for insurers, who have argued that they should be the ones to set payment rates for virtual care, not lawmakers. Their argument is that these rates should be lower for telehealth as online care reduces many expenses and shouldn’t cost more than in-person care.
Telehealth advocates are of the opposite opinion—reimbursement rates should be the same as those for in-person services as these are essentially the same services. They argue that payment parity should at least be introduced in the beginning to encourage medical professionals to start using telehealth.
Following the proclamation of the COVID-19 national health emergency, Florida Surgeon General, Scott Rivkees, M.D., of the Florida Department of Health (DOH) has issued an order that temporarily suspends some statutory laws regarding telehealth services in the state to make healthcare accessible to everyone. These include:
Another relevant order is the one issued by Governor DeSantis, which mandates insurance coverage for telehealth services during the coronavirus national emergency.
If you want to start practicing telehealth, but don’t know how, Curogram can help. It is a two-way messaging and telehealth platform that allows you to set up an online clinic in no time. Curogram complies with all the HIPAA rules and has all the required safeguards to ensure that your virtual clinic and protected health information (PHI) are safe at all times.
Our platform gives you the tools to provide remote patient care in the smoothest way possible. It is easy to use, both for patients and doctors, and it comes with a variety of features that will make your clinic thrive online.
The best thing about Curogram is that it allows you to manage all your telehealth appointments and communication with patients from a single platform.
Take a look at some of its features:
| Curogram feature | How it works |
| Two-way SMS texting | You can send your patients auto-generated text messages that they can reply to. You will see all your patients on your web-based dashboard that lets you send HIPAA compliant SMS messages directly to the patients’ phones. Texting is much more time-efficient than phone calls, and it will save your staff tons of time. |
| Smart appointment reminders | As Curogram syncs with your schedule, your staff doesn’t have to manually remind each and every patient about their visit. All you have to do is customize the types of reminders you’d like to send out, and Curogram will distribute these to your patients as ordered. They can reschedule or ask for further information by responding to your text. |
| HIPAA-secure apps for internal and external communication | Curogram offers both provider and patient apps for HIPAA-secure communication. You can use it on any device, be it a laptop, smartphone, or tablet. The patient app is completely free, and it is the first such app on the market that you can use to exchange PHI. With ample staff-to-staff secure messaging options, you get an all-in-one communication platform. |
| Natural workflows support | As a telehealth solution, Curogram can offer you what not many platforms can—support for your doctors’ and staff’s natural workflows. Curogram allows you to send electronic patient forms prior to the visit to save time on the day of the appointment. When the patient arrives at your online clinic, they go through the same processes they would in person. The nurse greets them and gets them ready, then the doctor takes over, etc. |
| Virtual waiting room | Curogram provides a virtual waiting room, which helps you streamline the process of seeing patients and make it smooth. The virtual waiting room makes it possible for your doctors to see who’s ready and for the nurses to prepare the waiting patients. This way, everyone is allowed to do their job without hindrances. |
| Multi-user video chat | If you need more people present at the appointment—no problem! Several medical providers can be with the patient at the same time. This also means that the doctor can have an assistant with them to take notes while they focus on the patient. |
| Integrates with any EHR | Curogram integrates with almost any EHR. This can save your staff a lot of time they would have spent entering all data twice. We can complete the integration with your electronic system in less than 48 hours! |
If you want to start practicing telehealth in Florida, look no further than Curogram!
Don’t see your state? We just haven’t written about it yet! Stay tuned on our blog or check out our article on telemedicine reimbursement by state.
Telemedicine by State in the US | |||
| Alabama | Indiana | Nebraska | South Carolina |
| Alaska | Iowa | Nevada | South Dakota |
| Arizona | Kansas | New Hampshire | Tennessee |
| Arkansas | Kentucky | New Jersey | Texas |
| California | Louisiana | New Mexico | Utah |
| Colorado | Maine | New York | Vermont |
| Connecticut | Maryland | North Carolina | Virginia |
| Delaware | Massachusetts | North Dakota | Washington |
| Florida | Michigan | Ohio | West Virginia |
| Georgia | Minnesota | Oklahoma | Wisconsin |
| Hawaii | Mississippi | Oregon | Wyoming |
| Idaho | Missouri | Pennsylvania | |
| Illinois | Montana | Rhode Island |
Telemedicine is rapidly changing the way in which modern healthcare is delivered. Through the use of advanced teleconferencing, telecommunications technology, and remote patient monitoring, healthcare providers can deliver medical care to patients anywhere, regardless of the distance.
Eliminating the distance barriers between providers and patients is crucial, given the fact that the majority of geographically isolated patients have extremely limited access to healthcare.
The lack of physicians and specialists in these areas means that patients often have to commute for hours to receive the required medical care. This increases their expenses further, adding to the already high medical bills.
It’s not uncommon for patients to put off a visit to the doctor until their conditions become critical. This is understandable, given the fact that patients in rural areas have to:
We can’t just accept this as a reality — that’s why both medical professionals and patients have embraced telemedicine as a viable alternative to in-person encounters.
Telemedicine offers a way to provide much-needed medical care to patients in remote areas, improves access to medical care, and facilitates the treatment of patients with chronic conditions. At the same time, telemedicine reduces unnecessary hospital admissions and can significantly reduce the treatment cost of certain conditions, such as:
To understand the impact telemedicine has on modern healthcare better, let’s take a look at some of the most common ways in which telemedicine is transforming healthcare delivery.
There are a number of ways in which telemedicine can aid in-person medical care and facilitate healthcare delivery.
Here are some common practical applications of telemedicine:
As we’ve mentioned, telemedicine greatly improves access to medical care for geographically isolated patients. The adoption of telemedicine had a significant impact on the way in which patients in the rural United States received medical care. The lack of medical facilities, physicians, and specialists in these areas is no longer a huge barrier to healthcare, given that patients can attend video appointments with doctors without having to leave their homes.
Patients no longer have to travel for half a dozen hours, then spend just as much time waiting at a hospital, or wait for days or even weeks for a doctor to visit the remote rural areas. Telemedicine in rural areas gives them a faster, easier, and cheaper way to connect with a physician and receive diagnosis and treatment.
Remote physician consultations are also extremely useful for minor health concerns and follow-ups for existing conditions. Patients have an easier, more convenient way to manage their health, while at the same time, telemedicine encounters lift the pressure from rural hospitals.
One of the major benefits of telemedicine is the speed at which the necessary medical care can be provided. For certain conditions, like patients suffering from a stroke, the speed of treatment is critical and can be the difference between life and death.
The sooner a victim of stroke receives a tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), the better. The common time frame is within three hours, but practice shows that receiving treatment within 90 minutes significantly lowers the chances of permanent brain damage and fatal outcomes.
This makes telestroke services invaluable for patients in rural and remote areas, who are often hours away from the nearest medical facility. With the use of telecommunications technology, patients or their family members can get in touch with a neurologist in minutes.
The neurologist can conduct a remote exam and, if necessary, order the administration of tPA or a transfer to a specialized healthcare facility.
Depending on the patient’s geographic location, they can be transferred either by an ambulance or a chopper, meaning the family of the patient who suffered a stroke doesn’t have to deal with transportation in these highly stressful situations.
Treatment often doesn’t end once the patient is discharged from an ER or the ICU. Rehabilitation and continuous monitoring of their health condition are necessary for tens of thousands of patients recovering from certain medical conditions like:
In most cases, these conditions make it rather difficult for patients to regularly travel to a medical facility for follow-ups, regardless if they’re in an urban or rural area. Telemedicine allows patients to undergo rehabilitation from their homes.
Doctors can conduct a cognitive or psychiatric assessment and monitor a patient’s condition remotely, allowing them to assess the recovery progress and, if needed, adjust the treatment.
Telemedicine also enables these patients to:
In any case, the ability to connect to a physician or specialist almost instantly, from their phone, computer, or laptop, greatly aids in the rehabilitation of patients.
Tele-ICU is a great asset for physicians and nurses in the intensive care unit. The use of modern technology provides them with an easier way to monitor patient conditions so that they can react promptly to important health signals, like a sudden change in blood pressure. It also helps them keep track of medication doses, ensuring that each patient receives the prescribed treatment at proper time intervals.
Physicians and nurses in the ICU often have to treat multiple patients, while simultaneously dealing with medical emergencies and various other distractions. Tele-ICU provides them with an overview of patients’ vital signs and facilitates access to physicians’ notes and lab results.
In this instance, telemedicine also allows remote physicians to monitor the progress of patients in the ICU closely, so they can quickly adjust the treatment and suggest new drug options when necessary. This also helps alleviate the pressure from nurses and physicians in the ICU.
Heart disease is one of the major causes of death around the globe. According to the CDC, nearly half of Americans have at least one of three key factors for heart disease.
The key risk factors are:
Prevention typically includes various lifestyle changes, like developing healthier eating habits, exercising, quitting smoking, etc. For patients that have an increased risk of a heart attack, regular visits to the doctor’s office are strongly recommended.
The trouble is, taking the time to come in for a check-up is a hassle for a large number of patients. They have to take time off work, commute and spend hours in waiting rooms. Most of them conclude that they “feel fine” and put off a visit to the doctor until their condition significantly worsens.
Telemedicine has proven to be an invaluable asset in heart disease prevention. Patients are far more likely to join cardiovascular disease management programs through telemedicine, given that it only takes minutes to jump on a video call with a healthcare provider.
Sharing medical information and receiving advice from a doctor online has proven to be a better alternative to in-person visits when it comes to heart disease prevention. It’s a faster, easier, more convenient way for patients to keep track of and manage their overall health.
According to the American Diabetes Association, 9.4% of U.S. citizens have diabetes. That’s nearly 30 million Americans living with diabetes, so it’s no surprise that healthcare costs related to the disease surpass $100 billion annually.
Telemedicine can help diabetics manage their condition more efficiently, allowing them easier access to medical care and enables them to be active participants in their own care plans. With quick and easy access to medical professionals, telemedicine increases patient engagement and encourages diabetics to adopt healthier behavior.
Various mobile apps enable them to keep track of calories easier, monitor vital signs, log workouts, and manage medication doses. Patients can also join preventive programs, and doctors can monitor their condition more easily, as well as provide support and medical advice that would help diabetics gradually change their behavior.
There’s an apparent shortage of mental health professionals in the United States. With the increasing understanding of the importance of mental health treatment in the U.S., telemedicine — or more specifically, telepsychiatry — has stepped up to help combat this issue. Today, psychiatrists can leverage modern telecommunications technology to reach patients in even the most remote geographic areas.
Another major way in which telepsychiatry, or, in other words, telehealth for mental health, helps patients is by removing the social stigma often associated with mental healthcare. Now, patients in need can receive psychiatric services from the comfort of their home, where privacy is ensured.
Remote consultations with medical specialists can also help with addiction treatment, allowing people to seek professional help in a quick and easy manner.
So far, we’ve talked about the general applications of telemedicine, and how it can transform modern healthcare delivery. In today’s digital day and age, it’s only natural that both doctors and patients are turning to telemedicine to improve access to healthcare, eliminate distance barriers, and reduce the cost of providing and receiving medical services.
Many patients and providers are still unsure about the effectiveness of telemedicine. Is its primary purpose to aid in-person medical care, and what are its limitations?
Although telemedicine isn’t supposed to replace face-to-face medical exams and treatment, it is a much-needed alternative for millions of patients in the U.S. and all around the globe.
To understand the importance of remote healthcare services better, let’s take a look at a few real-life telemedicine examples.
Due to large areas with low population density in Alaska, the healthcare network in the northernmost area of the U.S. is severely underdeveloped. Some smaller villages don’t even have a nurse practitioner, let alone a doctor. Until recently, patients with serious health conditions had no other choice but to make the often difficult journey to Anchorage.
By embracing telemedicine, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium enabled patients to receive high-quality medical care from doctors and specialists remotely, without having to leave their home communities.
Boston’s Partners HealthCare adopted a telemedicine program for the purpose of facilitating the treatment of congestive heart failure patients. Over 3,000 patients were instructed to use monitoring devices from their homes to send data regarding their weight, blood pressure, and other relevant metrics to the organization.
By leveraging the medical data and using clinical decision support software, they were able to identify quickly which patients needed interventions, and when. This enabled a panel of four nurses to provide effective care to over 250 patients.
The program was a huge success, resulting in 44% fewer readmissions by the participants and cost savings of over $10 million. Read more about telemedicine in Massachusetts.
Veterans Health Administration ran a four-year program that included remote patient monitoring and disease management using telemedicine for patients with various chronic conditions. Compared to traditional care, helping patients manage their conditions remotely increased patient satisfaction, reduced hospital admissions by 19%, and shortened hospital stay by 25%.
San Diego Kaiser Permanente dermatologists embraced telemedicine and provided the referring physicians with the ability to send images and patient information for review through a secure server. By removing the need to see every patient in-person, Kaiser Permanente dermatologists were able to treat 50% more patients — or about 800 patients monthly.
The University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester turned to tele-ICU to facilitate the treatment of patients admitted to the intensive care unit.
By enabling trained intensivists to provide remote care to ICU patients, the Medical Center achieved a 20% decrease in mortality and reduced the stay time and care costs by 30%. Read more about Massachusetts telemedicine.
Another great example of telemedicine in action is providing medical care to sailors and guests on cruise ships. When there’s a medical emergency on a ship or a cruiser that is hundreds of miles away from land, let alone a hospital, telemedicine can be a life-saver.
During medical emergencies, ships would typically have to divert course to reach a medical facility, losing both time and money in the process, all the while racing the clock and praying they’ll make it to a medical facility in time.
A study by the International Maritime Health journal showed just how big of an impact telemedicine can have in healthcare for seafarers. It highlighted the fact that in 20% of the cases, medical services delivered remotely were sufficient to treat the patient, allowing ships to stay the course.
It’s undeniable that telemedicine offers countless benefits to both patients and healthcare providers. If you’re interested in embracing telemedicine and expanding your services to offer your patients the opportunity to receive medical care remotely, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Most notably, the solution you choose must comply with the HIPAA Rules and Regulations. Since you’ll be sharing protected health information (PHI) online, you have to ensure that you do so in a safe, secure, protected environment.
Curogram is a comprehensive, fully HIPAA compliant telemedicine solution built specifically for healthcare providers. Our platform comes with built-in administrative and technical safeguards and incorporates the latest SSL technology, allowing you to treat patients remotely without having to worry about the technical details.
Curogram also integrates with virtually any EHR. You can easily synchronize your appointments from your EHR or practice management system, meaning you only have to enter appointments once!
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
With Curogram, you don’t need to hire IT experts and medical lawyers to set up a solution for you. We’ve handled all the technical aspects for you, so you can set up your virtual clinic and start treating patients in less than 48 hours!
Another crucial thing to consider when it comes to a telemedicine solution is the ease of use. The last thing you want is to have to spend months and thousands of dollars on extensive training to ensure your doctors and medical staff know how to use the telemedicine platform properly.
There’s also the fact that complex applications will only deter patients from seeking medical care remotely. The essence of telemedicine is convenience. That’s why we’ve made sure Curogram is easy to use for doctors, medical staff, and patients alike.
Main reasons to choose Curogram | X | X |
| Why doctors love it |
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| Why patients love it |
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| Why clinics love it |
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and see firsthand why Curogram is the leading telemedicine solution!
","status":"publish","position":3},{"id":"5fe3926dfdb4028bc7f1fd72","slug":"is-email-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Email HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"Recent events have shown us that in-person visits to the doctor’s aren’t always a viable option. The COVID-19 outbreak presented many challenges for countries all over the world and their healthcare systems.
Among the many challenges healthcare professionals face an emergency situation, like the COVID-19 pandemic, is the need to find a suitable solution that would enable them to communicate with patients and share protected health information (PHI) in a HIPAA compliant manner.
For most people, the first communication channel that comes to mind is email. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since most businesses are already using email for all sorts of internal and client communication.
You’re already using email, and so are your clients, so it makes perfect sense, right? There’s no need to search for a new solution, download an app, or set up a new system. That said, there are quite a few conditions that need to be met before you can even consider sending out emails with sensitive medical information.
On average, over 200 billion emails are exchanged on a daily basis, and a good portion of them — those including PHI — need to be HIPAA compliant. Let’s take a closer look at what conditions must be met before the emails you send to your patients or that you staff members exchange can be considered HIPAA compliant.
Debates regarding HIPAA compliance of email have been raging ever since changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) were first introduced back in 2013.
Despite various interpretations, The Security Rule clearly states that all forms of communication must be accompanied by the “appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards” as a way to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of ePHI.
Whereas the rule doesn’t explicitly prevent healthcare providers from using email as a means of communication and sharing PHI, it does enforce several requirements. Healthcare providers must implement access control, ID authentication, and provide audit, integrity, and transmission control mechanisms to:
This suggests that, in theory, emails can be made HIPAA compliant. It’s just that you will likely need an IT wizard to properly configure the emails before you can use them as a HIPAA compliant communication channel. The trouble is, most consumer email providers, like Gmail and Yahoo, don’t offer sufficient security mechanisms necessary to meet the HIPAA requirements.
The only option healthcare professionals have is seeking out email providers that offer these advanced security mechanisms and entering a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with them.
Email providers that offer HIPAA compliant email services | |
| Paubox | Virtru |
| MailHippo | NeoCertified |
| VM Racks | MaxMD |
| EmailPros | MD OfficeMail |
| Atlantic | Protected Trust |
HIPAA rules and regulations require you to enter a BAA with an email service provider if you intend to use the email service to share electronic protected health information (ePHI). This isn’t the case only for email but any third-party service provider that offers communication services to healthcare professions.
The need for an associate agreement stems from the fact that your business associates — the email provider in this instance — need to follow the same HIPAA standards when handling PHI. The agreement outlines their responsibilities and ensures that they are capable of providing mechanisms required to protect sensitive health information. This includes:
It’s important to note that a BAA isn’t optional. If the email provider doesn’t want to sign the agreement with your practice, that simply means they’re unable to fulfill the HIPAA requirements. Another thing to keep in mind is that, apart from an IT expert who will need to properly configure the emails, you will likely need to consult a lawyer who specializes in medical law before you can start sending out emails containing PHI.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Notification of Enforcement Discretion, allowing for temporary use of non-compliant solutions during the crisis.
A crucial thing to remember is that this is merely an exception, and it does not excuse failing to comply with HIPAA regulations in the future. If you continue to use email in the future, keep in mind that penalties for email HIPAA violations can be rather severe.
Penalties for email HIPAA violations | |
Violations | Fines |
| Violations that couldn’t have been avoided with reasonable care | $100 – $50,000 |
| HIPAA violations despite reasonable care | $1,000 – $50,000 |
| Willful neglect — corrected with reasonable time | $10,000 – $50,000 |
| Willful neglect — not corrected | $50,000 – $1,500,000 |
Despite the fact that this legislation allows for the use of non-compliant solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, compromising the medical information of your patients in any way will do irreparable damage to the reputation of your practice. Although you may avoid the fines, you will still lose a ton of money when the patients learn your communication channels aren’t secure and start switching to other healthcare providers.
Even after you’ve found a HIPAA compliant email service provider and signed an agreement with them, the necessary work before you can start using emails to send PHI is far from over. There are still multiple areas you need to take care of:
When it comes to the HIPAA Security Rule, the encryption of medical data is of utmost importance. The rule states that messages must be encrypted both in transit and when messages are stored.
Even if a service provider has the capabilities to encrypt the emails you send in transit, you must also have access controls in place that ensure only the intended recipient and the sender have access to the emails containing PHI.
Note that some service providers allow you to encrypt the emails you send but do not do this by default. In these cases, you must either:
The type of encryption is something to consider as well. Note that, as technology advances, new encryption standards become available. It’s always best to consult the National Institute of Standards and Technology and inquire about the latest recommended encryption standards.
If you don’t have a dedicated IT expert who could integrate those standards with your emails, make sure to check what type of encryption the email service provider is offering before opting to use their services.
Although HIPAA rules don’t specifically address email retention, they do require healthcare providers to have a backup archive, so data can be separately stored, accessed, and recovered in case of an emergency. This means you’ll have to find a separate solution, apart from the HIPAA compliant email service provider, that will enable you to store the PHI shared via email.
From a legal standpoint, you should also figure out how to retain the emails themselves. This is the case because individuals may request information regarding the disclosure of PHI and if legal action is taken against your practice, you may have to provide all the relevant email communication.
Storing all email communication, including all the attachments, such as health records and visit summaries, takes a lot of storage space.
Depending on where your practice is located, state laws may also require you to store the emails for a certain period of time, so it’s highly advisable to consult a lawyer before you send out a single email that contains PHI.
With a comprehensive, fully HIPAA compliant solution, like Curogram, you don’t have to bang your head against the table to figure out how to store large amounts of data. Curogram uses automatic backups on AWS (Amazon Web Services) servers, which you can easily access in an emergency.
After implementing a HIPAA compliant email service, you need to develop strict policies that clearly define how email should be used and for what purposes. Your staff should be properly trained on how to send encrypted emails in accordance with HIPAA rules and regulations. Every employee should be fully aware of their individual responsibilities, as well as the consequences that may arise as a result of data breaches.
Human errors cannot be tolerated when sending ePHI via email, so the policies you implement need to ensure that the right information is always sent to the right recipient using the necessary encryption methods.
Even if your emails are fully HIPAA compliant, you can’t start sending ePHI to patients out of the blue. You must first introduce them to the dangers and risks of communicating protected health information via email and obtain their explicit, written consent. Only after the patients have accepted the associated risks with email communication can you start sending emails containing PHI without violating any HIPAA rules and regulations.
Apart from all these requirements, there are two more considerations when using email to provide remote health services. Make sure to protect your email account with a strong password and two-way authentication to prevent unauthorized access. Consider including disclaimers in your emails as a means of notifying the patients that the message contains PHI and they should view it at their own discretion, rather than on public PCs and unsecured networks.
Curogram offers a 100% secure, fully HIPAA compliant two-way messaging platform that enables healthcare professionals to quickly and easily interact with their patients without having to worry about the underlying technical aspects.
That’s just one of Curogram’s functionalities — it also enables HIPAA compliant staff messaging and allows you to set up a virtual clinic that enables you to admit patients online.
As we’ve mentioned, email might seem like a quick and easy solution on paper, but considering the amount of time and effort necessary to ensure your emails are HIPAA compliant, it’s miles away from being the best solution.
Even with all the HIPAA rules and regulations taken care of, you’ll still encounter multiple problems and hurdles when using email to communicate with your patients. The prevalent issues with email include:
Patients may send you emails regarding their conditions, prescriptions, treatments, and appointments. You might also receive test results from labs or share PHI with a specialist via email.
Whether you provide medical advice or simply share medical information via email, apart from ensuring the communication is HIPAA compliant, you’ll also need to worry about entering the data into your EHR.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
Envision | Athena |
Epic | Mogo |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | Practiceworks |
This could be tedious since your employees would have to manually input all the information, taking valuable time they could be spending treating patients and wasting it on administrative tasks. Curogram integrates with over 700 EHRs, eliminates redundant administrative work, and allows you to focus on doing what you do best — helping people in need.
Apart from asking yourself whether or not you can use emails in a HIPAA compliant way, you should also consider how efficient email communication is in the first place.
When you use email to allow patients to schedule and reschedule visits, as well as send out appointment reminders, what benefits do you gain compared to doing it over the phone? If anything, you’re only creating more work for your employees and making it more difficult for patients to get in touch with your practice.
Realistically, only one person should manage your organization’s email account. This means they would have to dedicate most, if not all, of their time to handling all email communication — both direct communication with the patients and exchanging information with other staff.
They would have to keep track of dozens, if not hundreds of email chains, which can be quite overwhelming, not to mention the fact that emails might get lost. It would also take a while to answer all the customer emails, especially if you need to request additional information from your patients.
If you choose to rely on email as the primary form of staff communication, every employee will have to regularly check their inbox to see if they received any messages. This can be quite distracting and will likely hinder the performance of your employees.
That’s why email isn’t a viable communication channel — it’s just too clunky and inefficient. Curogram offers a much better alternative — a solution that’s specifically designed with the needs of medical professionals in mind that enables fast, secure, and HIPAA compliant staff and doctor-to-patient communication, all from a single dashboard.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to implement mechanisms that would allow healthcare professionals to treat their patients remotely became rather obvious. That said, remote healthcare services aren’t simply a necessity in extreme situations.
Now that people are aware of the capabilities of telemedicine and the fact that they could schedule and attend appointments online without ever having to leave their home, they will expect remote healthcare services.
The golden standard of telemedicine is video calls. Telemedicine is based on the idea of convenience. Patients are highly unlikely to sit down and take half an hour writing an email to their doctor when they can just hop on a video call and get medical advice and treatment within minutes.
Curogram’s telemedicine platform enables patients to instantly get in touch with their healthcare providers and receive medical care in the most convenient way possible. All they have to do is click a link that you can send them in an SMS via our secure two-way messaging platform, and spend a few minutes in the waiting room before an available doctor attends to them.
The bottom line is — email still has its uses as a communication channel, but there are far more efficient solutions for healthcare professionals that ensure HIPAA compliant staff and doctor-to-patient messaging.
Whether you want to transition to telemedicine completely or offer virtual appointments as an addition to your services — Curogram is the perfect, fully HIPAA compliant solution.
The main appeal of Curogram comes from the following facts:
Patients don’t have to worry about downloading different apps, checking notifications, going through complex processes to set up their accounts, or anything of the sort. With Curogram, they receive a simple text message with a link they can click to join the virtual waiting room and attend an online appointment.
As we’ve mentioned, Curogram offers a two-way messaging platform, so patients can simply respond to the message if they need to reschedule or have any questions prior to the appointment.
They can easily download the Curogram patient app with a single click and receive all the medical information, such as prescription and visit summaries, as downloadable files.
With Curogram, you do everything from a single, intuitive, browser-based dashboard. You can see all your colleagues that are online, quickly exchange medical information with them in a secure environment, message patients, and initiate video chats.
The best part about it is the fact that, once you send the visit summary to the patient, you’re done. Curogram integrates with your EHR and automatically enters all the relevant medical data, so you don’t have to waste time on administrative tasks.
Our platform mimics the same workflows of in-person visits. You can see all the patients in the virtual waiting room and even create multiple online clinics based on types of medical conditions and assign appropriate doctors and MAs to them.
The MAs can prep the patients before the doctors take over by having them fill the intake forms and requesting additional medical information when necessary. Each of your employees can see how long every patient has been in the waiting room, and available doctors can tend to patients as soon as they are ready for the video chat.
This enables doctors to focus on treating the patients, while the MAs take care of the preparation and visit summaries, increasing their productivity and allowing each doctor to admit up to 40 patients a day.
Have a successful telemedicine start with a robust, HIPAA compliant solution that takes care of all the technical aspects for you, so you can give undivided attention to your patients.
Telemedicine is rapidly gaining acceptance in the U.S., especially as an effective way to provide healthcare services to patients safely during the COVID-19 emergency. More and more patients and healthcare providers are leveraging modern telecommunications technology to receive and deliver medical services remotely.
One thing that is holding back healthcare providers and proves to be an obstacle in the widespread adoption of telemedicine is the complexity around the reimbursement for remote healthcare services.
The main issue with CPT codes stems from the fact that the guidelines for billing telemedicine are still being formed. Apart from rapidly changing, the billing guidelines also vary between payers—private payers, Medicaid, Medicare.
This often results in confusion, with healthcare providers not knowing or being unsure about what to bill for telemedicine services and which codes to use. The fact of the matter is, a good number of states have telemedicine parity laws, mandating reimbursement for telemedicine, often at the same rates as if the services were delivered in-person.
Most major commercial payers in the U.S. cover telemedicine services. This includes:
Medicare also covers a range of telemedicine services and has even expanded the array of reimbursable remote healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That said, if you’re planning on embracing telemedicine, you should always check to see if the patient’s insurance plan covers remote healthcare—and if so, what services are included.
Check our comprehensive telemedicine reimbursement by state article to get a quick idea of telemedicine reimbursement policies across the United States.
Even when telemedicine services are covered by the patient’s insurance plan, you still need to know how to properly bill for the medical services you delivered using telemedicine. This includes selecting the right CPT code and the right modifier when sending the medical bill.
In this article, we’ll explain what CPT codes are, go over the different types of CPT codes applicable to telemedicine encounters, and provide you with detailed lists that will help you correctly bill for remote healthcare services.
The Current Procedural Terminology codes—CPT for short—are a set of medical codes provided and maintained by the American Medical Association (AMA). The idea behind CPT codes is to create a uniform standard that medical professionals, patients, and payers use when referring to a wide range of medical services for financial and administrative purposes.
CPT codes describe testing, surgical procedures, diagnostic services, and all other medical procedures that a healthcare professional provides to a patient. In conjunction with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, CPT codes tell payers everything they need to know to reimburse you for telemedicine services—what symptoms the patient exhibited and what medical services you delivered to treat their condition.
The CPT code set is enormous, giving that it covers thousands of different medical procedures. In this article, we’ll highlight the ones that are applicable to telemedicine encounters, but first—let’s take a look at the different categories of CPT codes.
CPT codes are five characters long, and the five characters can either be numerals only or a combination of letters and numbers, depending on the category. The codes are divided into three categories:
CPT codes are the primary source of income for the American Medical Association. The AMA and the CPT Editorial Board update the CPT codebook yearly in October, so make sure you’re referring to the latest edition of the codebook when billing medical services.
The codes from the first category are the most commonly used by healthcare professionals. They are divided into six sub-sections, with each grouping pertaining to a particular field of healthcare.
The six subsections of Category I of the CPT codebook are:
Throughout the CPT codebook, the codes are listed in ascending numerical order. One exception to this are the Evaluation and Management codes, which are provided at the top of the codebook, given the fact that they’re most often used by physicians to report a large number of services they provide.
Category I CPT codes | |
Medical field | Numerical range |
Evaluation and Management | 99201–99499 |
Anesthesia | 00100–01999; 99100–99140 |
Surgery | 10021–69990 |
Radiology | 70010–79999 |
Pathology and Laboratory | 80047–89398 |
Medicine | 90281–99199; 99500–99607 |
Category II codes contain four digits and a letter F at the end. They are optional and can be used in addition to Category I codes to provide valuable information that can be used in performance management and future patient care.
Category II codes are also separated into different numerical subsets, corresponding to a specific element of patient care.
Some of the common subsets of Category II CPT codes include:
Category III is reserved for temporary codes, which describe new, experimental medical services or procedures, or new technology. One thing to note is that Category I has codes for “unlisted procedures,” but if a procedure is listed in Category III, providers have to use the Category III code.
As we’ve mentioned, the CPT Editorial Board reviews the codebook each year and may choose to include a code that was previously listed under the third category into Category I.
Regardless of whether a certain code remains under Category III or is transferred into Category I, all codes within Category III are archived in the CPT manual for five years and can be used as such.
Now that we’ve covered what CPT codes and provided a quick overview of the different categories, let’s take a closer look at the CPT codes commonly used in telemedicine and telehealth billing.
Before you reference the table below, we strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with telemedicine and telehealth laws in your state. Different laws, rules, regulations, and policies may apply to remote healthcare services, depending on where your practice is located, which may reflect the reimbursement of telemedicine by different payers.
Check out our blog to read about telemedicine and telehealth laws in various states, and be sure to read our comprehensive telemedicine reimbursement by state guide.
With that out of the way, here’s a detailed table of billable CPT codes for telemedicine services:
Telemedicine CPT codes 2020 | |||
| Remote healthcare services | CPT codes | Allowed by the CPT codebook | Allowed by CMS |
| Office or other outpatient visits | 99201–99215 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Office consultation | 99241-99245 | ✅ | |
| Subsequent hospital care services | 99231–99233 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pharmacologic management, including prescription and review of medication | 90863 | ✅ | |
| Subsequent nursing facility care services | 99307–99310 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Prolonged service in the office or other outpatient setting requiring direct patient contact | 99354, 99355 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Prolonged service in the inpatient or observation setting, requiring unit/floor time beyond the usual service | 99356, 99357 | ✅ | |
| Interactive complexity | 90785 | ✅ | |
| Psychiatric diagnostic interview examination | 90791, 90792 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Psychoanalysis | 90845 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Neurobehavioral status examination | 96116 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Individual psychotherapy | 90832–90834, 90836–90838 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Psychotherapy for crisis | 90839, 90840 | ✅ | |
| Inpatient consultation | 99251-99255 | ✅ | |
| Transitional care management services | 99495, 99496 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Family psychotherapy—without the patient present | 90846 | ✅ | ✅ |
| Family psychotherapy (conjoint psychotherapy)—with the patient present | 90847 | ✅ | ✅ |
| End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) | 90951, 90952, 90954, 90955, 90957, 90958, 90960, 90961 | ✅ | ✅ |
| ESRD related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients, (age-specific) | 90963, 90964, 90965 | ✅ | |
| ESRD related services for home dialysis per full month, for patients 20 years of age and older | 90966 | ✅ | |
| ESRD related services for dialysis less than a full month of service, per day (age-specific) | 90967, 90968, 90969, 90970 | ✅ | |
| Individual and group medical nutrition therapy | G0270 | ✅ | ✅ |
| 97802–97804 | |||
| Smoking cessation services | G0436, G0437 | ✅ | |
| 99406, 99407 | ✅ | ||
| Alcohol and/or substance (other than tobacco) abuse structured assessment and intervention services | G0396, G0397 | ✅ | |
| 99408-99409 | ✅ | ||
| Remote imaging for detection of retinal disease with analysis and report under physician supervision, unilateral or bilateral | 92227 | ✅ | |
| Remote imaging for monitoring and management of active retinal disease | 92228 | ✅ | |
| Administration of patient-focused health risk assessment instrument | 96160 | ✅ | |
| Administration of caregiver-focused health risk assessment instrument | 96161 | ✅ | |
| External mobile cardiovascular telemetry with electrocardiographic recording, concurrent computerized real-time data analysis and greater than 24 hours of accessible ECG data storage (retrievable with a query) with ECG triggered and patient selected events transmitted to a remote attended surveillance center for up to 30 days | 93228, 93229 | ✅ | |
| External patient and, when performed, auto-activated electrocardiographic rhythm derived event recording with symptom-related memory loop with remote download capability up to 30 days, 24-hour attended monitoring; includes transmission, review, and interpretation by a physician or other qualified healthcare professional | 93268, 93270-93272 | ✅ | |
| Medical genetics and genetic counseling services, each 30 minutes face-to-face with patient/family | 96040 | ✅ | |
| Individual and group health and behavior assessment and intervention | 96150–96154 | ✅ | |
| Education and training for patient self-management by a qualified, nonphysician health care professional using a standardized curriculum, face-to-face with the patient (could include caregiver/family) each 30 minutes | 98960, 98961, 98962 | ✅ | |
| Telehealth Pharmacologic Management | G0459 | ✅ | |
| Annual Wellness Visit, including a personalized prevention plan of service (PPPS) first visit | G0438 | ✅ | |
| Annual Wellness Visit, including a personalized prevention plan of service (PPPS) subsequent visit | G0439 | ✅ | |
| Annual alcohol misuse screening, 15 minutes | G0442 | ✅ | |
| Brief face-to-face behavioral counseling for alcohol misuse, 15 minutes | G0443 | ✅ | |
| Annual depression screening, 15 minutes | G0444 | ✅ | |
| High-intensity behavioral counseling to prevent sexually transmitted infection; performed semi-annually, 30 minutes | G0445 | ✅ | |
| Annual, face-to-face intensive behavioral therapy for cardiovascular disease, individual, 15 minutes | G0446 | ✅ | |
| Face-to-face behavioral counseling for obesity, 15 minutes | G0447 | ✅ | |
| Critical Care Telehealth consult, initial, 60 minutes | G0508 | ✅ | |
| Critical Care Telehealth consult, subsequent, 50 minutes | G0509 | ✅ | |
| Individual and group kidney disease education services | G0420, G0421 | ✅ | |
| Individual and group diabetes self-management training services | G0108 and G0109 | ✅ | |
| Telehealth consultations, emergency department or initial inpatient | G0425—G0427 | ✅ | |
| Follow-up inpatient telehealth consultations furnished to beneficiaries in hospitals or SNFs | G0406—G0408 | ✅ | |
| Comprehensive assessment of and care planning by the physician or other qualified health care professional for patients requiring chronic care management services (add-on code) | G0506 | ✅ | |
| Prolonged preventive service(s) in the office or other outpatient setting requiring direct patient contact beyond the usual service | G0513, G0514 | ✅ | |
| Office-based treatment for opioid use disorder | G2086—G2088 | ✅ |
We strongly recommend bookmarking this page, so you can easily reference this comprehensive list of billable telemedicine and telehealth services in the future.
In response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has made a few additions to the list above, allowing for several other medical services to be delivered via telemedicine.
Telemedicine services added by CMS in the face of the COVID-19 PHE | |
Telemedicine service | CPT codes |
| Emergency Department Visits | 99281–99285 |
| Observation Initial Care | 99218–99220 |
| Subsequent Observation Care | 99224–99226 |
| Same Day Admission/Discharge | 99234–99236 |
| Observation Discharge | 99217 |
| Initial Hospital Care | 99221–99223 |
| Hospital Discharge | 99238–99239 |
| Initial/Subsequent Intensive Care | 99477–99480 |
| Hourly Critical Care | 99291–99292 |
| Initial Critical NICU/PICU | 99468–99473 |
| Subsequent Critical NICU/PICU | 99475–99476 |
| Care Planning | 99483 |
| Initial Nursing Facility | 99304–99306 |
| Nursing Facility Discharge | 99315–99316 |
| Home Visits | 99341–99345 99347–99350 |
Domiciliary, Rest Home, or Custodial Care Services | 99327–99328, 99334–99337 |
Psychological or Neuropsychological Testing | 96130–96133, 96136–96139 |
| Physical Therapy/Occupational Therapy Services | 97161–97168; 97110, 97112, 97116, 97535, 97750, 97755, 97760, 97761, 92521–92524, 92507 |
| Radiation Treatment | 77427 |
Keep in mind that these codes are added by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, and are not allowed by CPT. In other words, these services are reimbursable by Medicare and Medicaid, when provided to the programs’ members, but private payers aren’t required to reimburse you for these services.
Apart from using the correct CPT code when billing for telemedicine and telehealth services, you also need to use the correct modifiers, depending on the nature of the provided service.
There are currently three different modifiers used when billing telemedicine and telehealth services:
The GT/GQ modifier is used when billing to Medicare, alongside the CPT code, to indicate that the service was delivered through synchronous telecommunication (GT) or via asynchronous telecommunication (GQ).
In 2018, CMS replaced the GT modifier with POS02. That said, some payers still recognize, and often even prefer the GT modifier. In addition, the GT modifier is also used for institutional claims billed under Critical Access Hospital (CAH), given that these claims do not use a POS code.
Providers must still use the GQ modifier when applicable—primarily for store-and-forward technology and remote health education.
Providers need to use the modifier 95 when billing to private payers, to indicate that the service was rendered via synchronous telecommunications channels. One thing to note is that Medicaid and Medicare do not recognize modifier 95. Some private payers might not recognize it either.
The safest course of action would be to use the POS02 modifier, but we would still advise you to consult the private payer or Medicare/Medicaid and inquire about billable telemedicine and telehealth services and applicable CPT codes and modifiers, before providing remote healthcare services to a patient.
POS02 is the new modifier, introduced by CMS in 2018. CMS defines this modifier as “the location where health services and health-related services are provided or received, through a telecommunication system.”
In practice, this means that POS02 is commonly used when billing CMS claims for synchronous telemedicine visits (live, two-way audio-video encounters).
Looking at all the technical conundrums, it’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare providers shy away from telemedicine. It’s not just the CPT codes—you also need to worry about:
Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Imagine none of the above-mentioned obstacles existed, and you could set up your virtual clinic and start seeing patients online in less than 48 hours. That would be the dream scenario, wouldn’t it?
With Curogram, this is a reality! We’ve spent years creating an ideal telemedicine solution that would allow healthcare providers to embrace telemedicine quickly and painlessly—and we succeeded!
When you choose Curogram, you don’t have to worry about the technical details at all. We’ve taken care of everything from you—our platform is fully HIPAA compliant, integrates with virtually any EHR, mimics your in-person workflows, and has a built-in billing function, making it incredibly easy to deliver and bill for telemedicine and telehealth services.
If you want to learn more about Curogram and test out its advanced features in practice,
click here and get started today for free
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","status":"publish","position":4},{"id":"5fe392d7fdb402d2f3f1fd73","slug":"is-slack-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Slack HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"Slack is a powerful communication tool that enables organizations to communicate essential business information amongst their employees effectively. Given the fact that it facilitates collaboration and is quick to set up and easy to use, more and more businesses are opting to use Slack for internal communication.
When it comes to direct communication with patients, the situation is a bit different. On top of that, healthcare providers must address one major concern before opting to use Slack as a means of communicating with their patients.
As is the case with any communication app that would be used for transferring electronic protected health information (ePHI), medical practices must ensure the application in question is HIPAA compliant.
The standard version of Slack does not comply with any of the HIPAA regulations since it doesn’t provide any technical or administrative safeguards. Given the popularity of the platform and Slack’s rapid growth, the company decided to develop a separate solution geared towards larger organizations, including healthcare providers.
This resulted in the Slack Enterprise Grid — an application that’s written using a completely different code than the standard Slack app, developed for companies with over 500 employees in mind.
The company’s idea was to develop an upgraded version of the existing application that would “meet the rigorous security needs of customers in highly regulated industries,” as Geoff Belknap, Chief Security Officer at Slack, stated back in 2017.
The added security features include:
On paper, these features perfectly align with HIPAA rules and regulations. The Slack Enterprise Grid platform also creates detailed access logs and provides administrators with the ability to remotely terminate connections with the app, as well as sign out specific users when necessary.
Slack Enterprise Grid includes two-factor authentication, unlike the standard app that simply requests username and password, and can be set up to automatically log you in when you open the app. This resolves the issue of unauthorized access, which may pose a significant risk to the healthcare organization since, without the two-factor authentication, other people might have easy access to PHI via employees’ phones or computers.
The enterprise platform also creates offsite backups, which is another HIPAA compliance requirement, and is compliant with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards, as well as SOC2 and SOC3 auditing procedures.
That said, if we scratch the surface and take a deeper look into Slack’s enterprise solution, we’ll encounter quite a few grey areas.
It also becomes evident that, when it comes to the needs of healthcare organizations, the platform offers extremely limited functionality.
You don’t have to be an investigative journalist to figure out that there are many issues with Slack Enterprise Grid regarding HIPAA compliance. All you need to do is navigate to Slack’s help center and check out the requirements and limitations regarding Slack and HIPAA.
Slack Enterprise Grid and HIPAA compliance
Image source: Slack and HIPAA
Let’s break down each of these requirements and limitations, so you can better understand their implications and the amount of effort necessary to make Slack HIPAA compliant.
This one is a given, but what exactly does switching to this plan entail? For starters, the enterprise solution is only available to organizations with over 250 active Slack workspace members.
Essentially, you must:
This means Slack Enterprise Grid is out of the question for small and medium-sized practices. Even if you do have over 250 employees, you would have to first purchase the standard package and wait for Slack to verify you have the 250 active workspace accounts.
This adds an additional step that would take several days, at the very least, before you can even consider fulfilling all the other requirements to make the enterprise platform HIPAA compliant.
In and of itself, Slack Enterprise Grid isn’t and cannot be fully HIPAA compliant. They can simply implement certain security measures that enable you to make the platform HIPAA compliant, but it still falls on you as the healthcare provider to figure out how you’re going to set up external Data Loss Prevention, for instance.
This is a typical marketing gimmick on Slack’s part. While they say that Slack Enterprise Grid offers support for Data Loss Prevention (DLP), they mean it’s possible to integrate a third-party DLP solution with the platform. Unlike fully HIPAA compliant platforms, such as Curogram, that were specifically built to include all the required mechanisms and safeguards, Slack can merely support these features, but does not provide them by default. This is another time-consuming task you need to take care of before you can start admitting patients online.
There’s also the fact that you need to contact Slack directly and request to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with them before you can start using the platform for any type of protected health information (PHI) transfer.
These two requirements tie in together because the BAA states that you — the healthcare provider — are responsible for figuring out solutions for other requirements, like:
You will have to find third-party providers to fill in these gaps, as well as sign additional BAAs with them, if necessary.
As a healthcare provider, you are also responsible for utilizing the application in a HIPAA-compliant manner. In other words, it’s possible to use Slack Enterprise Grid in a way that is not HIPAA-compliant, so all of your employees would have to be extra careful.
Herein lies the biggest issue with Slack Enterprise Grid — Slack itself doesn’t permit direct communication with patients.
The only way medical workers can utilize Slack is to exchange medical information amongst themselves, and only as messages and files.
Slack specifically states that other Slack features, such as voice calls, aren’t HIPAA compliant. This means you’d have to type out all the patient information or visit summary if you want to share it with a college via Slack.
Plus, you would have to manually input that information in your EHR, meaning you’d spend a better part of your day handling administrative tasks, rather than providing care to your patients.
This also implies you would have to find a completely different solution that would enable you to interact with your customers, and go through the entire process of ensuring it’s HIPAA compliant before you can enable online scheduling and virtual appointments.
Slack vs. Curogram | ||
Curogram | Slack | |
| Doctor-to-patient communication | Yes | No |
| HIPAA compliant staff messaging | Yes | Yes |
| Video platform for online appointments | Yes | No |
| EHR integration | Yes | No |
| Two-way authentication | Yes | Yes |
Even if Slack Enterprise Grid could be (in theory) made HIPAA compliant, that still doesn’t mean it’s a viable solution for healthcare organizations. Slack is simply a tool for internal communication, and that’s all it will ever be.
This begs the question — why would you opt for Slack in the first place if it doesn’t allow you to communicate with your patients? The only thing Slack Enterprise Grid provides is the ability to use it for HIPAA compliant staff messaging, albeit after going through a world of trouble to ensure all requirements are met.
That’s why we firmly believe you should look for an alternative that would ensure you stay HIPAA compliant without giving you a headache, all the while enabling you to provide your patients with an advanced telemedicine solution.
As technology advances, the needs of customers evolve. Healthcare is no exception — as the popularity of telemedicine increases, patients around the world expect to easily connect with their doctors online, through their smartphones, tablets, and computers.
Healthcare providers should no longer look at telemedicine as a luxury. The COVID-19 outbreak showed us all that it’s necessary to have a solution in place that would allow patients to reach their healthcare providers remotely.
This proved to be a challenge for the vast majority of healthcare providers, who were caught off guard by the sudden need to admit their patients online and scrambled to find HIPAA compliant telemedicine solutions at short notice.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services made an exception for the COVID-19 pandemic and issued a Notification of Enforcement Discretion, enabling healthcare organizations to use non-HIPAA compliant solutions for the duration of the emergency.
Note that this is an exception, and continuing to use non-HIPAA compliant solutions after the emergency would put your practice at great risk. Most of the non-compliant alternatives are not secure, meaning the PHI could be compromised, which is a severe violation of HIPAA rules and regulations—one that would certainly not be overlooked, regardless of the situation.
Most of these patchwork solutions are rather complex and don’t integrate with EHRs. This means you’d have to train your staff on how to use a specific application, they’d have to manually enter the data into your EHR, and there would be no way to mitigate the risks.
You would also have to drop the solution as soon as the COVID-19 national emergency is over and look for a HIPAA-compliant alternative that would enable you to continue providing remote services to your patients.
So, why not choose a fully HIPAA compliant solution in the first place, that you could continue using in the future?
Whether you want to offer remote services temporarily or want to include virtual clinics and online appointment scheduling in your core services, there are a few things to consider when selecting a telemedicine solution.
In our opinion, doctors should focus on treating patients, rather than solving complex IT riddles and wasting their time on redundant administrative tasks.
That’s why we believe a telemedicine solution should:
The first thing you should consider when choosing a telemedicine solution is how your patients will interact with it. You want to avoid complex apps that patients might find confusing. There is no need for the application to be fancy and have dozens of different options that the patient needs to check out before scheduling an appointment.
Curogram offers a simpler, faster, easier solution. When a patient schedules an appointment through your website, Curogram enables you to send them templated text messages as confirmation of their appointment. The templates are easily customizable, and you can adjust them according to your business needs in minutes.
Upon receiving the text message, customers can choose whether they’d wish to come in person or opt for an online appointment, for instance. Curogram’s messaging platform is fully HIPAA compliant and allows for two-way messaging, meaning you can easily communicate with your patients. They’ll receive reminders on their phones, and can simply message you back if they wish to reschedule.
For online appointments, you can simply send them a link that they can follow from their phone to join the virtual waiting room. They can download the patient app from there with a single tap, simply type in their email and provide additional documents, such as their medical records or photos, when necessary.
It doesn’t get any easier than this!
The solution should also be easy to use from the healthcare providers’ perspective. What this means is that a telemedicine solution should provide workflows that closely resemble in-person appointments and enable the doctors, MAs, and other medical staff to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.
Simply providing a video platform isn’t enough. A good telemedicine solution should include virtual waiting rooms and enable the medical staff to properly prep the patients before they get in touch with the doctor online, as well as make it easy to document each visit. MAs and doctors can see every patient in the waiting room, including each patient’s waiting time.
The staff can prepare patients beforehand, and any available doctor can start a video chat with a patient as soon as they are ready. This saves doctors a ton of time, allowing them to simply focus on the appointment and admit up to 40+ patients a day, without having to worry about administrative work.
Curogram lets you take care of everything from a single dashboard:
Our advanced telemedicine solution also integrates with over 700 EHRs, meaning all the relevant medical information, including visit summaries, is automatically stored in your electronic health records, so there’s no need for double data entry.
Notable Curogram EHR integrations | |
DrChrono | eClinicalWorks |
Practice Fusion | AdvancedMD |
Epic | NextGen |
Allscripts | Kareo |
Prime Clinical Systems | Greenway |
Curogram includes a HIPAA-compliant messaging platform for your staff, enabling them to easily share medical information with each other.
With Curogram, your employees can:
Without HIPAA compliant staff messaging, your employees would have to resort to sharing PHI through consumer apps on their phones, which can be extremely risky since non-medical staff may have access to their phones. On top of that, these apps don’t follow the HIPAA technical safeguards, meaning sensitive patient information could be compromised.
The platform assigns your practice a local number, so patients will always receive texts from the same phone number. Staff members can simply forward messages and requests to their colleagues when their expertise is required to answer customers’ questions, ease their concerns, or provide medical advice.
Your employees can also chat on the platform in-between appointments, given that the information shared between them is fully encrypted and only accessible by the parties participating in the conversation.
They can also create groups where they can discuss work and other topics while they’re on “standby” to help pass the time and maintain the feeling of being in a business environment, even while working from home.
Switching to telemedicine or simply integrating remote service can prove quite challenging for most practices.
First, you have to take the time to find a proper solution — and we don’t mean one that can be made HIPAA compliant. It also has to be intuitive, easy to use, and allow patients to quickly contact your practice and efficiently manage their health information in a secure environment.
Relying on free video chat options that don’t align with HIPAA rules and regulations, have poor connections, and are susceptible to errors will likely reflect poorly on your practice's reputation. If customers aren’t satisfied with the remote services you provide, they’ll likely leave bad reviews, which will inevitably lead to a significant loss of revenue.
Sub-par solutions that don’t offer EHR integration or simply solve one of your problems — like Slack Enterprise Grid with staff messaging — will lead to your doctors and staff wasting valuable time on answering the phone, sending voice mail reminders, manually entering the data in your EHR, scrambling to find a viable video platform, and figuring out how to share PHI and send visit summaries to patients.
This isn’t only extremely time-consuming — it’s also incredibly stressful. Keep in mind that this is a new work environment for your employees, and stressing over all of these things might have a negative impact on their mental health. That’s why you ideally want a telemedicine solution that mimics the work environment they’re used to and enables them to easily communicate amongst themselves and with patients, without having to worry about the technical aspects of the solution.
A fully HIPAA compliant solution, like Curogram, takes care of all your business needs and allows you to implement remote services in your practice with ease. Our telemedicine solution enables compliant, modern communication between doctors.
Curogram also provides a HIPAA compliant platform for secure staff messaging, EHR integration, smart SMS reminders, and a plethora of other useful features that allow you to dedicate more time to your patients.
Telemedicine has garnered a lot of attention during the COVID-19 emergency. Leveraging modern technology to deliver healthcare services remotely has proven to be a much-needed alternative to in-person doctor’s appointments.
It’s not only during a pandemic or similar emergencies that patients will appreciate the opportunity to reach their doctors online. There are a number of reasons why telemedicine is a necessity rather than a luxury.
People may be geographically isolated from the doctors, meaning that patients in rural areas likely have to drive for a few hours or even stay in a different city overnight in order to receive the required medical care.
They might even be without transportation or too sick to travel. There’s also the issue with the lack of specialists in some areas, which can increase the cost of medical care for patients further.
The main reasons why telemedicine is becoming more widely-used are:
The first iteration of modern telemedicine started back in the ‘50s when doctors would rely on telephone communication to share information with specialists when treating the same patient. With the advent of the Internet, new capabilities for delivering remote healthcare services arose. Now, a virtual doctor’s appointment is pretty much on par with an in-person encounter.
Healthcare professionals and medical facilities all over the world are leveraging modern technology to facilitate the delivery of healthcare services. If you’re considering upgrading your patient services and embracing telemedicine as well, there are a few things you should consider.
Here are the pros and cons of telemedicine to help you make an informed decision and determine whether your practice can benefit from treating patients over the Internet.
The use of modern telecommunications technology provides various benefits to both patients and doctors. Let’s take a look at all the advantages telemedicine provides to both sides so that we can understand the impact it has on modern healthcare better.
The ability to be examined, diagnosed, and treated online offers the following benefits to patients:
The distance and the travel time between a patient and a doctor can drastically limit access to health care. In rural areas of the United States, there are fewer than 50 specialists available for every 100,000 people.
This means that rural patients often have to:
Apart from geographically isolated patients, people with disabilities and older populations may find it difficult to receive the necessary medical care outside of the big cities, where doctors and medical specialists are scarce and spread too thin.
Telemedicine completely removes all distance barriers. It gives doctors and specialists the opportunity to provide remote medical care to patients in the most remote areas of the country, as well as to patients who might find it difficult to come in for an in-person examination — whether due to their condition or other circumstances outside of their control.
One of the main appeals of telemedicine and telehealth, from a patient’s perspective, is convenience. With the use of modern technology, patients can receive the required medical care without ever having to leave their homes. All they need is a mobile phone, laptop, or tablet, and a stable internet connection.
Most people dread the long waiting times, and it’s not uncommon for them to forgo the appointment or self-medicate, which could further complicate their condition.
Telemedicine gives them a great alternative — they can schedule the appointment with a single click or tap on their phone, and only dedicate half an hour to attend the virtual appointment. With Curogram, patients even get automated appointment reminders as SMS, so they don’t have to worry about forgetting the scheduled video call with the doctor.
As the telemedicine industry grows and more and more healthcare providers start offering these services, patients are slowly becoming accustomed to this level of convenience. Newer, tech-savvy generations especially appreciate this modernization of healthcare and are much more likely to choose a provider that offers telemedicine services.
Let’s not beat around the bush — healthcare in the United States is quite expensive. Add travel expenses on top of astronomical medical bills, and it becomes easy to understand why a lot of people opt not to visit the doctor’s office until their medical condition becomes critical.
Another thing to consider is the fact that most people have to take days off from work to come in for a physical appointment. Unless their sick days are paid in full by the company, most people would rather show up for work, even if it's obvious that they require medical attention, because they can’t afford the pay cut.
With telemedicine, they can schedule an appointment at the most convenient time, and get the proper diagnosis and treatment without having to skip work, arrange childcare, or otherwise disrupt their schedule.
There are various reasons why patients may avoid seeking medical care. Apart from the long wait times, the time they’d need to dedicate, and all the secondary expenses, they might also be embarrassed by their medical condition.
According to the survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health, over a third of the responders reported unfavorable evaluation process as the main reasons for avoiding health care.
How can telemedicine help solve these problems? Telemedicine removes many of the barriers that prevent people from seeking medical care, such as time constraints and expenses, while simultaneously increasing engagement. With telemedicine, patients don’t feel as disconnected from their healthcare providers — the medical professionals are more available and easier to reach.
When a patient can contact their doctor from their phone, rather than dedicating the time and money to visit them in person, they’ll be much more inclined to commit to their own healthcare goals, report early warning signs, and make follow-up appointments.
Curogram is a comprehensive telemedicine solution that provides a two-way messaging platform that facilitates doctor-patient communication. With Curogram, patients will always feel connected with their healthcare providers.
Once you confirm that they’ve scheduled an appointment, they'll receive an SMS with a link to join your virtual clinic at the given time. They can send an SMS if they need to reschedule, or if they have any questions regarding their medical condition, which is why HIPAA compliant texting is a core feature of any telemedicine solution,
Patients love the convenience and flexibility telemedicine offers, as well as the ability to communicate with their healthcare providers in real-time. This drastically improves patient satisfaction and can have a huge positive impact on the reputation of your practice, helping you retain existing and attract new patients.
Another huge advantage of telemedicine for patients is the ability to receive real-time urgent medical care. Rather than spending several hours commuting and waiting at a medical facility, patients can connect with healthcare providers almost instantly and get treatment options within minutes.
The timely delivery of medical care is critical for a variety of conditions. For instance, if an acute issue occurs, patients no longer have to rush to make it to an urgent care center or an emergency room (which can be quite costly), but can instead attend a virtual appointment with a specialist.
In addition, telemedicine encounters can eliminate the need for unnecessary hospital admissions, greatly reducing the patient’s medical bill.
A recent study published in the American Journal of Managed Care shows that patients receiving remote medical care:
Healthcare professionals and medical facilities stand to gain a lot from embracing modern telecommunications technology and offering remote healthcare services.
The biggest benefits telemedicine provides to doctors and medical facilities include:
Healthcare providers who offer telemedicine services may incur fewer overhead costs. The typical cost of a telemedicine visit is lower than the cost of an in-person encounter. In addition, there are significantly fewer no-shows in telemedicine compared to in-person encounters.
Embracing telemedicine also helps reduce unnecessary, non-urgent visitors to the emergency room, as well as eliminates the transportation expenses associated with regular checkups.
To give you a better idea of just how much money your practice can save if you embrace telemedicine, here’s a report by the American Hospital Association that shows how a telemedicine program saved 11% in costs and helped the providers more than triple their investment.
Another thing worth considering is that telemedicine allows you to turn the on-call time of a doctor into billable hours and helps reduce overhead for physicians who decide to transition to a flexible work-from-home model for part of the week.
We’ve already mentioned how telemedicine improves access to medical care for patients in rural areas. What this means for your practice is that you’ll be able to offer healthcare services to these patients and expand your patient base, ultimately increasing the revenue of your practice.
Medical facilities that embrace telemedicine will lose fewer patients to out-of-network transfer. With the ability to consult a specialist in minutes, you’ll be able to accurately determine whether a transfer to an out-of-network facility is necessary. A pilot project at San Diego’s North County Health Services showed that 65% of specialist referrals were unnecessary when doctors had a means of consulting the specialists through modern telecommunications channels. You can read more about telemedicine in California to learn how this state has dealt with the rising popularity of telehealth.
No-shows are one of the leading causes of revenue loss in an in-person setting. When a good number of your patients don’t show up for a physical exam, your schedule becomes heavily disrupted.
Accommodating for the lost time can be challenging, if not outright impossible, given the distance between the patients and your practice. You cannot just phone a different patient to fill in the gaps in your schedule. This leads to your doctors and medical staff idling and your practice losing revenue.
With telemedicine, you have much more flexibility. When a patient doesn’t show, and a new one wants to schedule an appointment, you can immediately admit them. The main idea is to reduce the number of no shows, rather than deal with the consequences of people not showing up for their scheduled appointments. Although people are less likely to skip an online appointment, since it’s way less of a hassle than coming for an in-person visit, they might still forget.
That’s why we made automated appointment reminders one of Curogram’s core features. With our platform, you can create templated text to send out to your patients as an SMS. You can choose when to send out the reminders and can have multiple — one a few days in advance, one on the day of the appointment, and one a few minutes before the video call.
This way, you can ensure that they don’t skip the appointment but also give them enough time to prepare for the virtual visit.
Telemedicine can help improve your practice’s workflows by enabling you to prioritize care delivery, as well as make recommendations and provide treatment more efficiently. With a proper telemedicine solution, you can ensure that tasks are designated to proper clinicians, improving the overall efficiency of your practice.
Curogram takes this a step further and allows you to streamline your online workflows to perfection. Our platform sends out electronic patient intake forms in advance of every visit, so you’ll have all the necessary medical information readily available when the patient shows up for an appointment.
The virtual clinics you set up with Curogram also come with advanced management tools, allowing your medical staff to easily onboard the patients and prepare them for the virtual encounter with the doctor. Doctors can see the patients’ status in the waiting rooms and initiate calls with a single button once the patient is ready.
This means doctors don’t have to concern themselves with onboarding or collecting additional medical data on the video call and can focus on examination and treatment. With Curogram, each doctor can admit up to 40 patients daily, significantly increasing the revenue of your practice!
Since telemedicine encounters are conducted remotely, your doctors and medical staff won't be exposed to the pathogens the patients might carry.
Despite the many benefits telemedicine can offer, there are a few potential drawbacks that you need to be aware of before offering remote healthcare services to your patients.
The considerations for adopting telemedicine include:
Before you can start treating patients online, you have to make sure that your doctors and medical staff have the required technical training and can properly use the telemedicine solution you opt for. A key thing to remember is that you’ll be handling sensitive medical data. Improper use of telemedicine software could lead to data breaches and confidentiality issues.
That’s why you need to be prepared to invest resources into employees’ technical training and ensure they are all keenly aware of all the protocols and procedures associated with sharing and handling of protected health information.
We made Curogram intuitive and easy-to-use for both patients and doctors, to minimize the amount of time and resources you’d have to devote to staff training. With Curogram, you handle everything from a single, web-based dashboard, in a 100% safe and secure environment.
Another thing to consider is that some telemedicine services might not be covered by your patients’ insurance plans. Before engaging in a telemedicine visit, it’s best to familiarize yourself with the parity laws of the state your practice is in, as well as advise the patient to check what types of telemedicine services are covered by their insurance.
On our blog, you can read more about:
And get all the information you need.
You can’t just choose the first telemedicine solution you come across. It’s necessary to ensure that medical information is fully encrypted and properly protected. Most video platforms aren’t designed for telemedicine, and they either don’t offer advanced SSL encryption (both in transit and at rest) or aren’t as secure as they claim to be.
Curogram is designed specifically for healthcare professionals, is fully HIPAA compliant, and comes with built-in safeguards, so you don’t have to hire an IT expert or consult a lawyer to meet all the compliance requirements.
Before you start practicing telemedicine, you must consider how you’re going to share PHI and document telemedicine encounters. With most solutions out there, your medical staff would have to enter the information manually into your electronic health record after each visit. This way, they’d be wasting a ton of valuable time on administrative tasks rather than on providing medical care to patients.
Curogram completely eliminates these redundant tasks. It integrates with over 700 EHRs, automating the entire process of updating and maintaining medical records. Thanks to our proprietary technology, Curogram can integrate with your EHR in less than 48 hours, while other solutions might take months!
Curogram EHR integrations | X |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
X |
Curogram makes adopting telemedicine a simple, easy, and seamless experience.
There is no learning curve since our software is incredibly easy to use. You don’t have to concern yourself with any of the technical details — Curogram comes with built-in capabilities that ensure your telemedicine practice is fully HIPAA compliant and that patients’ medical records are protected by the latest encryption technology.
Curogram features you’ll love | XX |
| Full EHR integration | Curogram fully integrates with your EHR, in less than 48 hours, and automates the entire process of updating and maintaining medical records. |
| Optimized workflows | Curogram replicates in-person workflows, allowing your doctors and staff to easily transition to an online environment. Our waiting room management tools facilitate patient check-in and check-out, allowing doctors to admit up to 40 patients daily. |
| Automated appointment reminders | Reduce no-shows by 75% with smart, automated appointment reminders. |
| Automated five-star reviews | Send review requests to your most satisfied patients and generate hundreds of five-star ratings. |
Learn more about Curogram and start your free trial
and see why clinics, doctors, and patients love us!
","status":"publish","position":5},{"id":"5fea3451fdb4024a9ef1fd82","slug":"telemedicine-reimbursement-by-state","title":"Telemedicine Reimbursement by State","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fdd02e75dfe8c43efac3d77","title":"Telemedicine"},"content":"Telemedicine is growing rapidly and changing the healthcare landscape for the better. With many patients embracing the benefits of remote care, the practitioners are looking for ways to incorporate telehealth services into their practice. We are witnessing the continual rise of telemedicine-only practices as well.
The utilization of telemedicine services depends on the reimbursement policy a lot. States with progressive reimbursement policies have much more telehealth recipients. With the healthcare system struggling to stay afloat, telemedicine proved to help release the pressure off hospitals and acute care units. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this may make a difference between an efficient response to the national health crisis and a complete collapse.
With strict and somewhat complicated legislation, telemedicine reimbursement policies can be quite confusing. Let’s check the situation in each state. You can find additional information at the American Telemedicine Association state policy center.
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/v57bman9oVJ-pl33BW-A1QfepyQTUKC7I4v3dHDHMXTUj4Tk9TBjqiLRmOzSI0l1Nekh7aS4tc64lciZei6dk4B2UlhUMdxbYpbqPiRu2m4rn87kUYSw7CQSCxixm3UHo-hoiIZU\")
Alabama enacted a partial parity law in 2016. Medicaid covers for live video telehealth, while the private payers are not obliged to cover for telemedicine, although they can still choose to include it in their insurance plans. Alabama-based physicians can practice out-of-state because the state is a member of IMLC.
Read more about Alabama telemedicine.
Even though Alaska does not have a parity law in place, Medicaid covers a wide range of services there. Private payers can cover telehealth at their discretion. They are obliged to cover mental health services.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Cb7PceNuW_8vh3EY9dLsBNT8wxzhm3bCyDxal8UxgAU4gDqqvqHnRYnD4Tb0Qf3HU-WTzRmPI8aJQntIpZyoOGOCNGda4v5JYKDdEPcUUGZBCAiO6SNgS1ggA0FcZQTDSKoS8iEa\")
Private payers are mandated to cover for telemedicine only in rural areas of Arizona. With the new law taking off in 2021, it seems that the reimbursement will expand. Arizona Medicaid covers a broader range of services although some restrictions apply to the type of service and eligible originating sites.
Read more about Arizona telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/dA1xUJqkpF8RPGCymrBawhKRBWHZxNnR6wXpiNHwpqp1DbxEt_63b7w_YyJjR8fwg9lTbCjnK1C9puK_mUp9ZYfJdKtJ8g_qA0RQXn8OA4Qdt73fk1rDj4YNv4sWLiquUPlRap06\")
Arkansas adopted a complete parity law in 2015. Some restrictions apply to the originating site, and there are specific requirements for establishing a doctor-patient relationship. The state is yet to join IMLC.
Read more about Arkansas telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fHemiFVO_CAeHkDZKPZz0XQo86u9D7ekranMCFbBRcwPd5ywrGUKy_p9htCaWKrB3aopnQeU331DIwig5QR5kOhtnF0gWqSw7ovOj_Xu7scMDUXefEKQAQI2RBwUnRG2qrHpr8qV\")
With the parity law in place since 1996, California was one of the first states to embrace and use all the advantages of telemedicine. Both private insurers and Medicaid are mandated to cover for telehealth though certain restrictions may apply. The state is not a member of IMLC.
Read more about California telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/T4K72Fmm2XiOHMWnPYRZhCTvPXfoV2h-lpF9HgAmIpZFH_ezXD7wgzPef1eiO3Jk_G1OlDgF_xhjGhNAaRNHy1fPEH7kSFiLi6Zz9q4SnMwUR9t1oF2bDFXdIDjSrlyLJR3b8YHz\")
Colorado has one of the most progressive telemedicine laws in the States. There are no location restrictions, and both Medicaid and private payers are mandated to cover for telemedicine in the same way they would for traditional practice. The state has joined IMLC.
Read more about Colorado telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/wZJsDSVI6W3w2ZD0WOn8Bih57Dsg3JShyjZjgK_JodEmEQpmIhMN9oadUmJF73Ov0w0RI0Hup88C5s6YUlS0aJqnAab3onnJ1vw252vlIC6h6wZ23iKQdnt3c51e7ZVeL6Gt5TmG\")
Although it is not a member of IMLC, Connecticut has a parity law in place that requires Medicaid and private insurers to reimburse for telehealth. Medicaid is required to cove for both live telemedicine and store-and-forward.
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Sgi8hxR0wZ2W8swHihCzUDhYebXGBevYb91nWq68s5QqFRCKL2AiwL6XvkPMDXQtIlcHc55fOU22LhH-N_eR_1tENzME7NwaJkP9RJ56XsvWzqXS6n0G3-kbDXyW2JOMtB0Ekjfy\")
Delaware officials adopted the parity law, and private payers and Medicaid reimbursement for live telemedicine is obligatory. The state has yet to join IMLC and expand the coverage to other aspects of telehealth.
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/whOvjaDHwT0xaph1u9g2o4efp8vH0kgCm7nW7DT5joQw4G7Sjg4K-agWIa54Z-zI296gdMMNY8uZ8kzEFzzAevWy6ge8kGbMqfntopFOYRViZr4gVxD4-A2qW18DmEBdGFtnk9wv\")
Florida Medicaid covers for live telemedicine, although there is no parity law in place. Although private payers are not obliged to reimburse for remote care, most of the insurers include telehealth into their plans.
Read more about Florida telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/m8SuFRYHwQ3KyYUjwpO3_gf9p86oHY2iP5WZHVlMUU5nCG2f1xImYTwyGZJ51O_sXvVHcrVPtnUhVPBSeW6R0CK76OgIDMyDrmoVmSj7rQxnTCP3o4RwvjIiefc2UgCivdjD3QQ0\")
Georgia adopted the parity law, and both Medicaid and private payers cover telemedicine. Georgia Medicaid reimburses for live telemedicine and store-and-forward. The state is a member of IMLC, so the physicians can practice over state lines.
Read more about Georgia telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/VB76c3dzX7XcsmjK2P78mwD8vwUMh0Hr93RqgttFMAL-Zeb12K_WNGVfQDKI4au_Vtd55AjdssT3_thrsRc96Any_xfcdSltjQcU8NtPETMShO0XpScqU8mK8ffbT8cpDaVcBanG\")
With many of its residents living on remote islands, Hawaii has a progressive telehealth policy. The law mandates that Medicaid and private payers cover telemedicine in the same way they do in-person practice. The state hasn’t joined IMLC yet.
Read more about telemedicine in Hawaii.
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Idaho is a little behind with regulating the telehealth practice. Although Medicaid covers live telemedicine, the state does not have a parity law in place. Idaho is a member of IMLC, so the physicians can practice in other participating states.
Read more about telemedicine in Idaho.
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Medicaid and private payers must cover telehealth according to the Illinois parity law. Remote patient monitoring is included in the coverage by Medicaid, although some limitations may apply. The state participates in the IMLC program.
Read more about Illinois telemedicine.
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Indiana has a full parity law. Private payers and Medicaid both reimburse for telemedicine, with Medicaid covering remote patient monitoring as well. Indiana is still not a member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.
Read more about Indiana telemedicine.
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The Iowa telemedicine law ensures complete parity as of 2019. Iowa officials accepted telehealth, and so did the patients. The state is also a member of IMLC, so Iowa-based medical professionals can offer their services to patients in other states that participate in the program.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/X2NHqYIt4r7NAOlCYvMYfUChq3N3q2lUUNGn4AVVuJhtDsdQZNCm3tqqlDkO9ZQkTLpBHqndoTb9G-87RRN1P0Z_3KH8rfUjzUHjNKjc0yHNFSqJC0gv6fsO-1h-MvkVt9g6KzsK\")
The payers can establish their own reimbursement rules in Kansas, although there is a valid parity law in the state. The policies depend on the insurer, so practicing telehealth can be confusing. The state joined IMLC, so the practitioners can benefit from treating patients outside Kansas.
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With progressive telemedicine reimbursement policy, Kentucky is one of the leaders in the U.S. As of 2019, the patient’s home is on the list of eligible originating sites. Kentucky is a member of IMLC.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/CahsfkYHRrbP0Hivigfj_hhWbsh6xbeYYhFbfNc8ByfJgpTkVGb96P0zFWjF4ymTVClyZgtw2maRSYLoLP0t4-pO8fZQUkXQ1MB5FkZcsmJLfY90ql0PjjOF5TNc4qZ0srdbqLRy\")
The parity law imposes some restrictions on telemedicine coverage in Louisiana, mostly regarding the healthcare providers. Medicaid does cover live telehealth and remote patient monitoring, but the state did not join IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in Louisiana.
American Telemedicine Association gave Maine a perfect grade because the state has a complete parity law and precise guidelines on how to practice telehealth. Maine joined IMLC, and it continually upgrades its policies.
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Ks_zbCMx8bIyjDKlxvUachYNTJUIvMovTqp3ZDfaJ4oPd5cPfIM4GRQ_j-V_sAy5WFWR-S_u26hwkBsc0_eOfhM1OjmgzpB5wMQN69fNqeIg0pL4G1EuQHIuVtUA3mc8TFW26i04\")
Maryland is also one of the states with full parity law in place. Medicaid and private payers reimburse for telemedicine in the same way they would for traditional practice. By joining IMLC, the state enabled Maine practitioners to offer their services across state lines.
Read more about Maryland telemedicine.
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Medicaid does cover telemedicine services in Massachusetts, but there is no parity law in the state. Massachusetts needs to work on its telehealth policies since the state did not join IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in Massachusetts.
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Since the state removed most of the restrictions regarding the geographic locations, Michigan is on the right track with telehealth. The parity laws mandate reimbursement to Medicaid and private payers, and the state is the member of IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in Michigan.
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Minnesota is one of the leaders in telehealth. Both private payers and Medicaid cover telemedicine services. Even dental plans are included, which is a rare case. The state participates in the IMLC program as well.
Read more about Minnesota telemedicine.
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The shortage of physicians is the reason for a progressive telemedicine policy in Mississippi. With full parity law, Mississippi seems to be dealing with the problem much better. Private payers and Medicaid reimburse for telehealth in the same way they do for traditional practice, and the state is a member of IMLC.
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By expanding the coverage on home settings, Missouri pushed telemedicine in the right direction. The parity law requires reimbursement for telehealth services from private payers and Medicaid. Missouri is still not a member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.
Read more about Missouri telemedicine.
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Private payers are mandated to cover for telehealth in Montana. Medicaid is also on board, but with a couple of restrictions. The state has a parity law in place and has a progressive telemedicine policy. Montana participates in IMLC.
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Nebraska changed its telemedicine policy in 2017. The state adopted a full parity law, mandating Medicaid and private payers to reimburse for telehealth services. In the same year, Nebraska joined IMLC.
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The complete parity law is in place in Nevada, and the state got rid of several arbitrary limitations that restricted the development of telemedicine. Insurers cover a wide range of telehealth services, and Nevada became an IMLC member as well.
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Private payers cover telehealth in New Hampshire, but Medicaid’s reimbursement is restricted to certain services. The state did join IMLC, and many telemedicine providers from New Hampshire benefit from practicing in other member states.
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While private payers are obliged to reimburse for telemedicine, New Jersey Medicaid only covers telepsychiatry. We hope that it will update its policy soon. The state is not a member of IMLC, which makes it harder for the providers to practice across state lines.
Read more about telemedicine in New Jersey.
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New Mexico has one of the most progressive telemedicine policies in the country. With complete parity law and full overage by all insurers, both the providers and recipients benefit immensely from telehealth. New Mexico is yet to join IMLC to make the cross-state licensing easier for the practitioners.
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7OLbf3nMLovz08LAEawPKrNCZPRhO1RZ0ySRy_3RXE7tKtIcDtXxb98jiOEP_xXPI0w3nLJraI9C0_ZDVFHkRuowhW9dNb68Kxhc4oimn9cNG9QXhi2xeBqP3Ul2xvDdBV3TBaOi\")
After the introduction of the complete parity law, private insurers are mandated to cover telemedicine in New York. Medicaid expanded its coverage as well, so the state has a progressive policy and comprehensive guidelines on how to practice telehealth. New York did not join IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in New York.
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North Carolina officials are yet to realize the benefits of telemedicine. There is no parity law, and the providers depend on direct payments, which is not stimulating. The only exception is telepsychiatry. Medicaid covers live telemedicine, but previous approvals are required.
Read more about telemedicine in North Carolina.
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Private payers and Medicaid reimburse live telemedicine in North Dakota. The state jumped the bandwagon and continues to support telehealth. North Dakota became a member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/4qLQ1NdrsTCG2wfpToxq9j7B1_qnBpEYbmyNpQFn-1jCYBRCSInG5MSmeUnwwDhIPMoqzMHZvdPp-afZentGKEigSDqf67dwyhcIbsYqjngjhOu8mpd-TSN8rmPm0MW1yHTe2wja\")
Ohio does not have a full parity law, but the practice is booming in the state, especially when it comes to telepsychiatry and behavioral therapy. Although the state is not a member of IMLC, Ohio has a liberal policy on licensing for practicing telemedicine.
Read more about Ohio telemedicine.
Oklahoma has a progressive telemedicine policy, and private payers and Medicaid reimburse for the services according to the parity law. The state even has a no-fee policy for telehealth in non-profit hospitals. Oklahoma is participating in the IMLC program.
![](\"https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/miKS1iJT2Ms9gTRFfVMhAoR9905jOdkGm2byUJc7h0H6mw1b86-GCrXG1kkHBi4VG5Am-UFVRvqnxIm0KHScSq0cfeyhQOHBPipq7lvVFcJwnTDwWJO6OybtEcEl13AP5mdfy69V\")
Practitioners in Oregon can be reimbursed for telemedicine services provided via email or telephone, which is uncommon. The progressive policy requires coverage from both Medicaid and private insurers. The state is not a member of IMLC, unfortunately.
Read more about Oregon telemedicine.
Pennsylvania is still to adopt a complete parity law and join IMLC. Medicaid beneficiaries can use live telemedicine services, while the coverage by private payers is not mandatory.
Read more about telemedicine in Pennsylvania.
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Practicing telemedicine is no longer complicated in Rhode Island with a complete parity law in place. Medicaid and private insurers are mandated to reimburse for telehealth. We are still waiting for the state to become a member of IMLC.
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ok1lrhjKl11rRM2C0m69KokQFZUQigLZMOPi0ztSMvNIodoH1w6ADylU35K58iJ1PfAolqYXxp8oTIIwvXUFLJooHwIVM1zy_SsmanBczBEQRAorhwjXIzO8CiwB7LDpIl0nStMg\")
South Carolina is one of the leaders in telepsychiatry in the U.S. Other aspects of telehealth are not looking so good without an existing parity law. Medicaid does reimburse for live telemedicine. South Carolina has not yet joined IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in South Carolina.
With restrictions on the patient’s location and the types of services covered by Medicaid, South Dakota has a long way to go when it comes to telemedicine. The parity law would resolve many of the issues. The state is participating in IMLC.
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Jof2pCOLR26PMaQrZuSw_pTZLbOG7scmJg8TCKupGHLYJudskk4jqG2r4IS_hIXga_JB1LP-CZv8tS5E8wuAfhA8o4zs-HcGYdZq7Higni1rWdq0sjE-r2Zck5BjpfIr859QdMzn\")
Tennessee’s parity law mandates coverage for telemedicine to Medicaid and private payers. With no location restrictions, the state is one of the leaders in telehealth. Tennessee has set an excellent example by joining IMLC.
Read more about Tennessee telemedicine.
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jFVMS7JJNVp9gsLdgPt5J-Lqx17BnTuMmXczmAnnUP3fa_rtG6reDZ7I8HHZqsiv9RMH0gr4kTYRWJrzE3SfjGlNQFWKFIu3r-mTjFmMgoAlf5RQitNyh61dFHuTx5ocgvKbuvjM\")
The shortage of medical professionals in Texas accelerated the liberalization of telemedicine policies. The parity law requires reimbursement from Medicaid and private payers in the same way as in traditional practice. By joining IMLC, Texas would become the leader in telemedicine.
Read more about telemedicine in Texas.
There is no current parity telemedicine law in Utah. The state is a member of IMLC, and Medicaid reimburses for live telehealth services.
Vermont keeps improving its telemedicine policy. The state has a full parity law that requires coverage from private insurers and Medicaid. Vermont is participating in IMLC and continues to lead the way in expanding telehealth services.
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ftNIYSjHn6awnVbzthkXRtNeo5mCJ7IgBlJQVjpuF-YDD1CG4Er-CF5YbyXt43s5t4EQ1_NX2zec4ujER2DyvMQQBjnSKXyDImJM5ZKPrh8NRG34cCPfL-IjKmKCM1wcJovYpURl\")
Virginia enacted a parity law, so all insurers must cover telemedicine. Some restrictions apply, so the policy could use a bit of refining, but the state officials are making progress in liberating telehealth. Virginia is still not a member of IMLC.
Read more about telemedicine in Virginia.
Complete parity law enabled the expansion of telemedicine in Washington State. The practitioners get reimbursement from both Medicaid and private insurers. Washington joined IMLC, so cross-state licensing became much easier.
Read more about telemedicine in Washington.
Medicaid in West Virginia covers live telemedicine for patients in rural areas, but there is no comprehensive parity law in the state. By joining IMLC, West Virginia is starting to develop and expand its telehealth policy.
Wisconsin has no active parity law, but after joining IMLC, the state is starting to work on its telemedicine policy. Medicaid does cover some telehealth services, but Wisconsin officials should work harder on developing remote care in the state.
Read more about telemedicine in Wisconsin.
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9DBUmdCEvlF4m00CseNMypsWKMeR2UQaxkUciBHUI-MWxdNOawlvMjVSZxgB_DbbpwT2cBu-SKARORuhOmz53aFscS5Qlv5o5r7nuz1wsOlzhGsN5VW3905VkdqsfygGff74UliF\")
Wyoming did not adopt a parity law that would mandate reimbursement for telemedicine services. Medicaid does cover for telehealth, but without comprehensive legislation, the practice will not develop. Wyoming joined IMLC, which is a step in the right direction.
Defined as delivery of healthcare through the use of digital communication channels and technology, telemedicine is a broad term that includes many services. The practitioner and the patient are in remote sites. The location of the patient is called the originating site, while the physician’s location is called the distant site.
With the development of digital technology, the possibilities to deliver remote care are continually expanding.
There are many ways to practice telehealth .Not all of them will qualify as valid healthcare services, or to be more precise, not all of them will qualify for reimbursement. Live telemedicine and store-and-forward are usually covered by insurers, while mobile health and remote patient monitoring are not.
For the detailed overview, check the table below.
| Type of Service | Definition | Example | Reimbursement |
| Live Video Calls | A real-time video chat between a health provider and a patient | A medical consultation through a two-way video communication channel | Yes |
| Store-and-Forward | Using electronic communication channels to transmit the recorded health history (both digital images and documents) | A physician sending scans, blood test results, photos of skin conditions to a specialist for evaluation | Depending on the state |
| Remote Patient Monitoring | Transmitting medical data collected by the patient to a doctor in a remote location | A patient wearing Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-enabled devices that report on an activity (e.g., heart rate) | Depending on the state and diagnosis |
| Mobile Health | Utilizing mobile devices (phones and tablets) for medical purposes | A patient receiving notifications regarding appointments or reminders about when to take medication | No |
Telemedicine legislation tends to be complicated, and it varies significantly from state to state. Since the originating site is the place where the virtual visit takes place, the laws of the patient’s residing state apply. Regardless of their location, practitioners are obliged to have a license to practice medicine at the location of the recipient.
This proved to be tricky because each state issues its medical license. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLC) has been helpful with cutting through the red tape in obtaining cross-state licenses. Not all states joined the program, unfortunately, so getting the necessary permits can be a tiresome process.
Reimbursement is not less intricate. The first thing to understand is that there are two types of parity:
When it comes to reimbursement, it is essential to understand the legislation of the originating site. Various insurance plans have different regulations in each state, meaning the private payers, Medicare, and Medicaid do not have a uniformed policy on the federal level.
The scope of federal telehealth legislation is limited. The primary focus is on specific health crises or emergencies rather than the introduction of this model on a larger scale. State-federal partnerships like Medicaid and Medicare are the center of attention, but their practicing agencies depend on the state laws regarding reimbursement policies.
The coronavirus outbreak shook the system, and there are many interstate initiatives to improve the laws on the federal level. The public health crisis demands a unified approach to this emergency.
Two issues influenced the legislation of telehealth in each state:
It seems that the states with larger rural regions or the higher number of residents living in remote locations have a more liberal approach in regulating telemedicine. The shortage of medical professionals also plays a significant role in the decision-making process.
Even the states that allow and support remote care impose limitations on various aspects of telehealth. These restrictions usually apply to:
Depending on the insurer, the limitations may vary in the same jurisdictions. Medicaid and private payers may interpret the laws differently, so the practitioners should get familiar with the regulations thoroughly. You can check the details here.
Although one would assume that the patient’s home would be the most logical originating site for telemedicine, that is not always the case. Many state laws impose restrictions on the place of the virtual visit.
The eligible originating site is often a medical facility that is the closest to the patient’s home. Some states require the place to be staffed with medical professionals to qualify as the originating site.
Limitations can sometimes apply to the region as well. Only patients from rural or remote areas are allowed to enjoy the benefits of telemedicine in some parts of the U.S.
In some states, only specific telehealth services are allowed. What type of service will be eligible usually depends on the assessment of the appropriate medical authority. They will determine what is suitable or safe for telemedicine and what is not.
Some medical officials still view telehealth as an unfit model of practice for specific conditions. It is vital to understand the rules and regulations that apply to the originating site and to comply with them. Telemedicine providers are subject to the same disciplinary measures as traditional healthcare professionals, so you must make sure you are not violating any state or federal laws.
Which providers are fit for telemedicine mostly depends on the shortage of medical personnel in a specific state. In remote areas, almost all providers are allowed to practice telehealth. Specialists, especially the ones with expertise in rare diseases, are welcome to practice virtually without limitations.
The exception to the rule is peer-to-peer consultation as well. A physician can participate in the treatment of the patient, even if they are not an eligible provider, if the primary doctor is eligible and present during the virtual visits.
The COVID-19 public health crisis caused many states that had a conservative approach to telemedicine to reconsider their position. Numerous initiatives to expand the coverage and to join the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact show that telehealth is the future of healthcare.
States with regulated remote care laws are more successful in dealing with the pandemic. Telemedicine vendors, like Curogram, offer invaluable assistance in establishing testing sites or help hospitals with efficient software solutions in fighting the epidemic. One of the best examples is the partnership between Curogram and United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, which resulted in setting up the first drive-thru testing facility in the country.
American Medical Association is calling for wider use of telehealth during the crisis and offers guidelines on how to bill the services during the pandemic accurately.
If you are thinking about establishing a telehealth practice or incorporating it into your business, you should be aware of some requirements regarding the technology behind telemedicine.
Although you can choose the vendor of your liking, reimbursement is only mandated if the standards of care are met.
In telehealth, this means that you must choose the platform wisely because the technology also has to comply with legislation. It is crucial to opt for the solutions that can provide data security and privacy, so make sure you use:
Insurers can deny reimbursement if the technology does not meet the required standards.
It is also essential to check if the telemedicine platforms can integrate with other medical software that you are using. This is especially important in the case of electronic health records (EHRs). The Curogram platform integrates with over 700 EHRs, so keeping and updating clinical documentation is quick and easy.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Another piece of software your digital platform should integrate well with is your billing system. It allows you to code your visits appropriately, and submit them to claims almost in real-time.
","status":"publish","position":6},{"id":"5fe39355fdb402c0e0f1fd74","slug":"is-skype-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Skype HIPAA compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"
Skype is one of the most popular communication apps out there. It allows for easy video and audio calls as well as instant messaging between individuals and groups. That’s why many have wondered if Skype can also be used as a means of communication between healthcare professionals and their patients.
The truth is, if online communication involves the exchange of protected health information (PHI), the communication channel used needs to comply with HIPAA rules, which deal with the safety and privacy of such information. The violation of HIPAA can result in enormous fines.
Whether Skype is HIPAA compliant is still a matter of some debate. This is difficult to determine as the platform was not built for the purposes of exchanging sensitive medical information in the first place. It is much better to turn to a trusted telemedicine platform such as Curogram, which we designed carefully with HIPAA regulations in mind.
This article will explore how Skype fits into the HIPAA framework and whether it can be used for communication between medical staff and patients.
As a medical practice, if you want to conduct your business over Skype, you first need to understand how the law sees this platform in terms of sharing PHI.
If you’re using the services of a third-party provider that involve them having access to your patients’ PHI, this provider is considered your business associate (BA) under HIPAA. In that case, they need to sign a business associate agreement with you. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) provides a sample contract that you can use. This contract extends your HIPAA responsibilities to them as they also have access to sensitive patient information and need to keep it safe.
Most communication channels are considered BAs. There is an exception though, known as the Conduit Rule, and it applies to transmission-only services. The Conduit Rule allows covered entities to use the services of a provider without entering into a BAA. This rule applies if the provider transmits PHI or electronic PHI (ePHI) but doesn’t have access to it and doesn’t store it. The example of these are internet service providers (ISPs).
Some argue that Skype should be considered an exception under the Conduit Rule as it’s only a medium through which the information flows. All the information is encrypted, as well. The question is can Microsoft, the owner of Skype, decrypt and access the correspondence?
Microsoft is obliged to comply with legal requests for access to Skype correspondences. In order to do so, they would need to have the key to the encrypted communication themselves. This disqualifies Skype for the conduit exception regardless of whether Microsoft refrains from accessing the information or not.
We believe Skype is considered a BA, and you need to enter into a written agreement with Microsoft if you want to use Skype for transmitting PHI. At this point, it goes without saying that the free version of the platform can’t be HIPAA compliant. Skype for Business is your only potentially viable option.
According to Microsoft’s compliance page, you can enter into a BAA with them for Office 365 as a covered entity, but it is unclear whether Skype for Business would be included in the agreement at all.
According to the HIPAA Security Rule, both HIPAA-covered entities (you) and their BAs (Skype in this case) need to safeguard and protect PHI. We will explore if Skype has the capacity to implement all the technical safeguards required under HIPAA, including:
When it comes to access control, Skype users do have unique identifiers required under the Security Rule of HIPAA that allow them to access their profiles. This includes both medical personnel and patients. The unique identifiers, in this case, are either Skype usernames, emails, or phone numbers.
The problem is that there should also be some procedures that govern the access of PHI in an emergency. What constitutes an emergency for you should be clearly defined in the business agreement. In essence, an emergency is:
Power outages and cyber-attacks are some examples of emergencies. The free version of Skype can’t help you much in these situations as it doesn’t back up any of your information (including electronic PHI). It merely stores your chats, recordings, and items you have shared, but the duration it’s available for varies. You need to be careful and find a backup solution if you don’t want to lose important files.
Here’s how long everything is stored in your chat history:
| Item | How long it’s available |
| Chat messages | Determined by users |
| Chat titles | Determined by users |
| Files | 30 days |
| Pictures | Determined by users |
| Voice messages | 30 days |
| Videos |
|
| Call recordings | 30 days |
Apart from backup, there must also be clearly defined procedures that determine who can access the data in an emergency and in what way. Needless to say that if there’s no backup with Skype, there’s no emergency backup plan either.
Skype for Business is more flexible in this regard and can be made HIPAA compliant (at least when it comes to backup). If you go for Office 356 E3 or E5 packages, you’ll be able to create an archive to store all your communication, including ePHI.
Automatic logoffs are another addressable function prescribed by HIPAA. This feature represents an important aspect of preventing unauthorized access to ePHI.
After a period of inactivity, an electronic session should end automatically. This is a great safeguard in case someone forgets to log out after a telemedicine session with a patient and compromises their sensitive information this way.
The free version of Skype doesn’t offer this option at all. If you purchase an E3 or E5 Skype for Business package, you can enable the logoff feature. It is important to note that this feature won’t be available by default, and it is your responsibility to make your Skype package HIPAA compliant in this respect.
HIPAA requires all covered entities and BAs to maintain activity logs. These are reports that give you insight into the sequence of all the events that took place in an app. They are otherwise known as audit trails. They should provide information about each access or attempted access to PHI as well as any changes introduced to the relevant data.
Skype doesn’t maintain an audit trail required to be considered HIPAA compliant. You won’t be able to see if any third party has accessed your Skype account or tampered with your data stored there, including sensitive patient information. Your audio or video telemedicine sessions with patients might also get compromised, and you won’t have any way of knowing this without activity logs.
Utilizing third-party logging apps, such as Loggly, could be a great solution for storing non-PHI logs, but this is not an option with PHI-related logs. Involving yet another party in the maintenance of your PHI would mean entering into another BAA and having to figure out if the entity is HIPAA compliant in the first place all over again.
Not maintaining an audit trail is one of Skype’s greatest misgivings, and it represents a serious impediment in even beginning to consider this platform HIPAA compliant.
Integrity control refers to setting mechanisms in place to aid in:
The authentication of ePHI means being able to determine whether patient information has been altered in an unauthorized way or even destroyed. If the integrity of this data is compromised, this could lead to serious consequences for patients’ health as well as for your medical practice.
Skype has no mechanisms in place that could help you keep the integrity of ePHI intact. That means that anyone can make unauthorized changes to it. These changes could be done purposely or unintentionally and can also result from electronic failures independent of human intervention.
The authentication of persons trying to access ePHI means confirming that the user who wishes to log in is who they claim to be. Aside from using identifiers, such as email addresses, usernames, or phone numbers, there has to be an additional proof of identity in the form of something known only to that person. These are usually passwords or PIN codes.
Skype has this part of authentication covered. If you want to log into your account, you need to enter a unique password.
Encryption is advised by HIPAA, but it is not required. However, encryption is so widespread nowadays that it would be ludicrous not to utilize it.
HIPAA does obligate you to use technical measures to protect ePHI from being accessed by unauthorized parties, be it encryption or something else. This responsibility transfers to your BA as well since you should both strive to keep patient data safe.
Skype meets this standard by utilizing AES 256-bit encryption. This is generally considered a high level of protection. Whether you’re chatting or using Skype-to-Skype video or audio calling, the data you and your patients transmit is encrypted and unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have direct access to this communication.
Beware of Skype’s option to make Skype-to-phone calls, though. In this type of communication, your data is not protected by encryption and can be intercepted and misused.
The rules are a bit more strict if you’re a federal agency. The federal government has a set of Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) in place. Advanced encryption that Skype uses, or AES, satisfies a part of these requirements, but not all of them. This means that federal agencies can’t use Skype for telemedicine or telehealth, and neither can their contractors and vendors.
Transmission security standard implies that there should be technical security measures in place to protect PHI from unauthorized access during its transmission over electronic networks. These measures come down to two safeguards we have already mentioned:
Integrity control in this context means that the integrity of ePHI needs to be protected during transmission. As we have said, Skype communication is encrypted, except when it comes to Skype-to-phone calls.
On top of that, Skype does not integrate with your EHR, which means that even if you were to send sensitive documents, you’d have to grab them from your EHR first. Curogram can integrate with any EHR in 48 hours and offer secure document transfer, as well as workflows that doctors and other medical personnel are already used to.
The Privacy Rule doesn’t directly concern BAs, but all its provisions that apply to covered entities automatically extend to their BAs. This is because the ultimate goal of this rule is to protect the privacy of ePHI, and all involved parties have to work toward it.
The Privacy Rule boils down to the following provision: covered entities and BAs mustn’t use, access, or disclose ePHI without the explicit consent of the individual unless it’s for the purposes of medical treatment, payment, or other healthcare operations.
As we have mentioned, Microsoft may be legally required to disclose your private communication (including ePHI) to law enforcement. Not even HIPAA argues against this kind of disclosure. Yours and your patients’ Skype data should otherwise remain private.
The Breach Notification Rule requires covered entities and BAs to report any breaches of ePHI to patients, and in severe cases, to law enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as well. This should be done no later than 60 days after the breach occurs.
Skype doesn’t have the ability to maintain activity logs, which means it has no mechanisms that can help you determine when a breach happened, let alone inform you about the details of the breach.
The inability to monitor and report breaches of ePHI alone makes Skype non-compliant with HIPAA.
The free version of Skype is absolutely non-compliant, whereas Skype for Business packages satisfy some HIPAA requirements but not others. It is safe to say that Skype is not HIPAA compliant and should be avoided in the context of telemedicine and telehealth.
The good news is we offer a much better and a completely HIPAA compliant solution for your medical practice.
Curogram is a platform for telemedicine and two-way texting that was built specifically for healthcare providers, unlike Skype that’s used for general communication. Our solution is 100% HIPAA compliant—it’s in sync with all its regulations. You don’t have to worry about fulfilling legal requirements and can focus on what you do best—providing healthcare services.
Healthcare professionals choose Curogram over Skype because:
Curogram integrates with almost any EHR there is. You don’t have to waste time on endless data input and can focus on being the best physician to your patients. The integration is simple and will take less than 48 hours. There’s no need to wait for months for the integration process to complete. You’ll be able to sync your appointments with your patients’ EHR, so you won’t have to input all the data twice. This is something Skype doesn’t offer at all.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Instead of jumping on a call with the patient straight away on Skype, you can replicate the workflow of a physical visit with Curogram. Workflows are customized for different doctors and medical staff, and patients get properly onboarded before they get to the appointment. They fill a secure electronic intake form, which the provider can then access in PDF. The whole process is neat and simple, so you don’t have to waste time on technicalities.
Both you and your patients can get properly ready before the appointment, thanks to Curogram’s virtual waiting room. You can see how many patients are waiting there, whether they’re ready, or if MAs are in there preparing them. Skype certainly can’t offer you this option. You would have to figure out a different way to prepare your patients and yourself before the appointment.
Aside from collecting intake forms before the appointment, our telemedicine platform allows you to easily share documents with patients after the visit. You can have ready-made documents for various purposes and send them with a simple click of a button.
Curogram | Skype | |
| HIPAA compliant | Yes | No |
| EHR integration | Yes | No |
| Streamlined workflow | Yes | No |
| Virtual waiting room | Yes | No |
| Safe document transfer | Yes | No |
We also have a secure text app for sending any patient information in a HIPAA-secure way. Thanks to the EHR integration, your patients will get EHR-generated visit summaries.
With Skype, you and your patients can only exchange documents through chat.
Curogram is proud to offer one of the best telemedicine solutions to medical professionals. We want to hear from you! Drop us a line!
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RingCentral Office is the company’s all-in-one solution, which includes:
Aside from that, individual features are available as separate products, and RingCentral also provides an internal messaging app — Glip — so you can choose the package that best fits your needs.
If you’re a healthcare professional, you’re probably wondering if RingCentral offers all the necessary functionalities and whether it’s a HIPAA compliant solution.
As the company grew, RingCentral recognized the opportunity to market their communication solution to healthcare organizations as well. That’s why they’ve invested significant efforts to ensure the platform and the team messaging app are fully HIPAA compliant.
It’s evident that RingCentral understands the need to protect the confidentiality and integrity of protected health information (PHI) since their platform has multiple layers of built-in security.
The safeguards RingCentral uses to ensure HIPAA compliance include:
RingCentral includes all the required infrastructural safeguards that enable healthcare providers to leverage their services in a HIPAA compliant manner. These include:
For any type of communication — which involves sharing PHI — to be HIPAA compliant, the data must be encrypted both in transit and at rest. RingCentral ensures sensitive medical information is protected by utilizing two types of encryption:
The RingCentral platform is based on SSAE 18 and ISO 27001-audited data centers, and the company follows the latest security standards. The data is also protected in the physical environment, thanks to on-site engineering specialists and full-time security guards.
RingCentral doesn’t just boast their HIPAA compliance capabilities without anything to back up their claims. They undergo a third-party SOC2+ audit annually to ensure all the HIPAA rules have been met and that the necessary safeguards have been properly implemented. You can even get in touch with the company and request a copy of the latest report.
RingCentral is fully HIPAA compliant, so you won’t get into any trouble for violating the HIPAA rules and regulations if you opt for this solution. That said, just because RingCentral is HIPAA compliant, it doesn’t mean it’s the best solution for your practice.
If you’re considering switching to telemedicine or adding virtual appointments to your portfolio of services, you may encounter quite a few problems and hurdles with RingCentral. The most prevalent issues with this platform are:
Although at a glance, RingCentral may appear like a solid option for healthcare providers, if we look a bit deeper, we’ll find that the RingCentral Office platform is actually quite limiting.
One of the biggest limitations is that you can only host one meeting at a time. This isn’t something that RingCentral tells you ahead of time. Their clients had to learn this the hard way when they attempted to host two meetings at a time, only to find out that starting the second one ends the first meeting.
Why is this such a big issue for healthcare organizations? When you think about it, this means only one person can talk to one patient at a time. This means that, even if you have multiple doctors available, only one of them can attend a video call with a patient, while everyone else is either idling or has to wait for their turn.
On top of that, this significantly increases the time doctors spend with patients. They’d have to first gather all the relevant information, get them to fill the intake form, treat the patient, then send them the visit summary and other documentation before moving on to the next patient. This way, even if all your doctors are available to admit patients online, you’ll be limited to treating ten patients a day at most.
RingCentral includes a waiting room, but it gives off the impression that it’s an improvised feature added after multiple client requests rather than a well-thought-out functionality. Sure, your patients can wait for the doctor in the virtual waiting room, but given that only one meeting can take place at any given time, a patient who’s third in the queue will have to wait several hours for their turn. It’s obvious this isn’t something your patients will find appealing.
With Curogram, not only can you host multiple video calls simultaneously—you can also create as many separate virtual clinics for different medical conditions as you want. The MAs can tend to patients in the waiting rooms and prepare them for the visit so that the doctors can focus on treating them rather than on administrative tasks.
Every available doctor can see all the patients in the waiting room, as well as how long they’ve been in the queue, and initiate a video call as soon as the patient is ready.
Another thing to be aware of is that RingCentral doesn’t provide its own virtual meeting platform. They are powered by Zoom, which begs the question we’ve answered in detail in another article — is Zoom HIPAA compliant?
What we want to highlight here are the various security exploits and issues Zoom encountered recently. Users have uncovered that cyber criminals could hack Zoom to spy on private conversations, which resulted in the vast majority of companies utilizing this solution to switch over to more secure options.
Zoom’s privacy risks and dubious security practices enabled users to join private, password-protected meetings and pull all kinds of pranks — ranging from sharing hate-filled messages and pornographic materials to joining as AI-powered deepfake of Elon Musk and interrupting ongoing meetings.
This immediately raised alarms and sprung the question of how secure the information shared via Zoom actually is. For healthcare professionals dealing with PHI, this spelled a huge NO.
Zoom is working on updating its security measures and rectifying the damage done, but it’s doubtful companies will be able to trust Zoom in the future. The fact remains that they claimed they were HIPAA compliant and had the latest security safeguards in place, prior to these incidents.
With that in mind, we strongly recommend avoiding RingCentral meetings. Despite the company’s best efforts to make their platform 100% secure, it would appear that their business associates aren’t on par.
Curogram offers you a much better alternative — a HIPAA compliant platform that is based on secure servers and includes video call capabilities, and protected with multiple layers, using the latest security standards.
Although RingCentral might be a good option for internal messaging — excluding the Meetings feature for the reasons stated above — if you intend to host virtual appointments, you must also consider the patients’ perspective.
Given the fact that your patients would have to download the RingCentral App prior to joining the call, RingCentral isn’t the most convenient solution. With Curogram, you can simply send your patient an SMS with the link they can click to join the video call — it doesn’t get any easier than this!
The issue with RingCentral goes way deeper than simply requiring the patients to download the app first. Multiple users reported that their clients had issues joining the calls, or that they would drop in the middle of a meeting.
Imagine how your patients would react. They wouldn’t think that the third-party service you’re using is bad. They’d be frustrated with your organization, as you’re the one who chose to use this service. Opting for an unstable video solution would definitely poorly reflect on your practice’s reputation, and you would risk losing patients to other providers who offer better remote services.
At Curogram, we believe transparency is the key to lasting business relationships.
That’s why, when you opt for our telemedicine and two-way messaging platform, you know exactly what you’re getting, and you have access to every feature from the get-go. We also offer a free trial, so you can see exactly how Curogram works in practice and have the opportunity to fully test out the functionality of our platform before making a commitment.
From what we have seen on RingCentral website and what we’ve read from their user reviews, they don’t seem to have the same policy. Some of the features necessary for healthcare professionals are hidden behind an additional paywall.
For instance, unlimited storage is only available with the RingCentral “Ultimate” package. One of the HIPAA requirements states that you must have a backup of all the data you share, which you can access in case of an emergency. While Curogram offers this by default as a built-in feature, RingCentral practically forces healthcare professionals to opt for the most expensive package as the only solution that includes unlimited cloud storage.
RingCentral pricing plan also reveals that different pricing plans provide a varying number of toll-free minutes.
RingCentral Pricing Plan — Toll-free minutes | |||
Essentials | Standard | Premium | Ultimate |
100 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 10,000 |
What this means is that you can make a limited number of free phone calls — regardless of if your staff members are talking among themself, with other providers, or patients. After you’ve used up the toll-free minutes, you’ll have to pay 3.9¢ per minute.
Even if the difference in price at the end of the month is a couple of dollars, we still cannot justify additional expenses when paying monthly subscriptions for a solution, and neither should you.
There’s a reason why RingCentral doesn’t mention EHR integration and doesn’t respond to customer inquiries regarding this capability — their platform doesn’t integrate with any EHRs.
Screenshot taken from RingCentral website:
![](\"https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/xw4ezF7QOGvF4k2dWbS1XhGzi4ygGfdS_JYi6xjlflJwtG8r6UTpwSUb7Qm_VYGROZPPUvBaLr2fs09IHQ7IPAgNmIHZe54kb0OjH9NAv5_F5I_IWaR56SEAbj86TFkzArh3G8DU\")
EHR integration should be one of the main features of a telemedicine solution. If you shared PHI via a platform that doesn’t offer this capability, you would have to manually enter all the information into your EHR. In other words, you would be wasting valuable time on tedious administrative tasks, rather than spending that time treating patients.
That’s why Curogram integrates with over 700 EHRs — to eliminate the need for double entry and help you optimize the business operations of your practice.
Popular EHRs Curogram integrates with | |
Allscripts | Epic |
Practice Fusion | Prime Clinical Systems |
Greenway | eClinicalWorks |
NextGen | AdvancedMD |
Kareo | DrChrono |
Telemedicine is quickly advancing, with more than half of the U.S. hospitals having a telehealth program. The need for remote healthcare services became all the more apparent during the COVID-19 outbreak.
With the number of healthcare providers embracing telemedicine rapidly increasing, you can’t afford to lag behind. Patients are quickly becoming aware of the possibility to attend doctor’s appointments online, and it’s safe to say a good number of them will rely on this functionality even after the COVID-19 pandemic.
This gives your practice an opportunity to attract new patients by offering them advanced remote services. Before patients opt for your practice over one of your competitors, most of them will read a couple of online reviews first.
That’s why we believe reputation management is an essential feature of a comprehensive telemedicine solution. Curogram enables you to send review requests to people who are most satisfied with your services, allowing you to boost your online visibility and attract new patients. After an online visit, a patient can give you a score on a scale from one to ten.
Whenever a patient gives you a high score, you can prompt them to leave a positive review. They receive a direct link and can give you a five-star rating with a single click, making it easy to generate hundreds of superb reviews.
RingCentral doesn’t include this option, so you would have to figure out another way to promote your practice online and invest in a marketing solution to introduce your telemedicine services to potential patients.
Speaking of reviews, RingCentral itself has dozens of poor customer reviews from unsatisfied customers.
The most common complaint is the lack of customer support, where users are left to their own devices when they encounter a problem. The stability of the platform seems to be another issue users often face, with phone lines going offline multiple times a day.
Some users also report that they were bound by 24-month contracts after automatic renewal and that the company kept charging them even after they were physically unable to use their services (e.g., the organization’s headquarters blew up, destroying all the phones they used).
There were also several instances where RingCentral overcharged the clients or charged their cards twice. The users shared they had to email and call RingCentral customer support repeatedly, often for several days, to try and get the issue sorted.
Taking everything into consideration, it’s evident RingCentral isn’t a reliable platform for healthcare professionals. Although they may be fully HIPAA compliant, their business ethic is questionable, and the functionality of their platform is heavily limited.
Curogram is a much better alternative to RingCentral for the variety of reasons we’ve mentioned in this article.
Our platform is designed specifically for healthcare professionals and offers everything you need, all in one place:
If you’re looking for a 100% secure, fully HIPAA compliant solution that will allow you to transition to telemedicine or implement remote services in your practice — Curogram is the perfect option!
Partner with us today and ensure a successful telemedicine start with Curogram.
Telemedicine has become more profitable than ever. Plenty of healthcare providers are getting involved with it and one of the main things they’re curious about is whether there is reimbursement.
There’s never been a better time to tackle telemedicine than now—people are seeking aid more than ever, meaning that the profit potential is at the peak. Once the pandemic is over, we predict that at least half of the people who started using telemedicine during it will continue to opt for virtual doctor visits instead of traditional, in-person ones.
Many states encourage people to use virtual healthcare, but one of the main concerns that patients have is telemedicine reimbursement. Although it has been discussed for years, there’s still no set standard—telehealth reimbursement depends on services provided, location, and payers.
Parity laws are looking to get telemedicine to the same level as regular medicine. The majority of states have them, which is excellent news for those looking to start practicing telehealth.
The whole point of these laws is to push insurance companies to reimburse telehealth at the same rate as they would reimburse in-person visits.
States that have parity laws are:
| Arkansas | Hawaii | Maine | Oregon |
| Arizona | Georgia | Maryland | Oklahoma |
| Alaska | Kentucky | Montana | Rhode Island |
| Connecticut | Indiana | Minnesota | Texas |
| California | Louisiana | New Mexico | Tennessee |
| Colorado | Missouri | New Hampshire | Virginia |
| Delaware | Mississippi | New York | Vermont |
| District of Columbia | Michigan | Nevada | Washington |
States that don’t have parity laws are:
| Florida | Massachusetts | North Carolina | West Virginia |
| Alabama | Nebraska | Pennsylvania | Wisconsin |
| Iowa | Kansas | Ohio | Utah |
| Illinois | New Jersey | South Carolina | Wyoming |
| Idaho | North Dakota | South Dakota |
In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, and Illinois, legislation has been proposed to change the law.
In the United States, there are 76% of practitioners and hospitals that are either fully or partially involved in telehealth. The percentage only shows how successful telemedicine has become over the years, and there are plenty of case studies that prove it.
To get a better idea of how far we’ve come in telemedicine reimbursement, let’s take a look at what the statistics propose about:
Private payers handle telehealth reimbursement differently, in comparison to Medicaid, which we’ll get to in a moment:
As far as Medicaid is concerned, this is what the current circumstances are like:
When it comes to cross-state licensing, the situation is as follows:
Cross-state licensing has been one of the main concerns following telehealth for the longest time. Nothing’s unflawed, though!
For more information, you can check out our detailed guide on telemedicine reimbursement by state.
If you’re curious to find out how to get telehealth reimbursement through Medicare, you should know that only services provided by certain healthcare workers are eligible for reimbursement.
For telehealth reimbursement services to be eligible, they need to be provided by:
It used to be common practice for states to impose geographic restrictions for telehealth reimbursement, but luckily, there are only six states left that still have these rules. The states are:
It’s much more common for states to have originating site restrictions than geographic ones. There are twenty-three jurisdictions that currently have such restrictions. If you want to know whether your place of residence is one of them, try to find it here:
Back when nobody knew that the global emergency would make its way into the United States, patients had to be in one of the following originating sites in order to receive Medicare reimbursement:
Reimbursement laws are heavily dependent on your location. Most states oblige you to obtain a medical license in the same state where your patient resides. This makes telemedicine a bit complex to tackle, but the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact was presented as one of the best solutions we’ve seen so far.
Formed as an idea back in 2013, the Compact became fully operational only four years later, in 2017. There are twenty-seven states that are part of the Compact now. Although it made telemedicine considerably easier to tackle, the Compact doesn’t guarantee the ability to practice telehealth outside of your state’s borders.
Each state has a medical board that reviews practitioners’ applications, meaning that the outcome depends on the board itself. In some states, you’ll wait two to three weeks for your application to be reviewed, whereas in others, you may have to wait for a few months.
Don’t rely on the information you see about some other state—do your research and find out which rules apply to you.
In case you’re worried about whether you’ll be able to join the Compact, fret not—80% of applicants manage to meet the requirements proposed by the team behind the IMLC.
If you want to become part of the Compact, you need to meet certain requirements:
If you’re curious to see whether the state you reside in is part of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, try to find it among these:
Vermont, Georgia, and Oklahoma aren’t ‘States of Principal Licensure,’ meaning that holders of VT, GA, and OK licenses can’t become part of the Compact. If you aren’t a holder of one of those, you are eligible to obtain a license for these states through the Compact itself.
If you’re a healthcare worker looking to indulge in telemedicine, you should know that each state proposes specific requirements you need to meet. Although they can vary significantly, these are some of the most common ones you will come across:
Twenty-seven states propose the same rates for telemedicine services as they do for in-person visits. If you want to see whether your state is among them, try to find it here:
To help all healthcare workers involved in telemedicine get reimbursement, the American Medical Association released a document that offers special coding advice during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the document, they showcased 18 scenarios for treating patients, some of which are:
Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 took place, telemedicine has changed drastically. Thousands of people started seeking aid from doctors virtually because there was no other way of receiving help for conditions that weren’t life-threatening.
In an effort to make medical assistance more approachable, Medicare, and Medicaid reimbursement for telehealth services changed in a way that allows everyone to hop on board. These are the policies that were introduced by Medicare:
| Originating provider site | All healthcare workers were allowed to provide telehealth services from their homes. |
| Originating patient site | Patients were allowed to receive help from the comfort of their homes. |
| Eligible telehealth services | There were around 180 telemedicine services that were eligible for reimbursement. |
| Reimbursement rates | Telehealth reimbursement rates were changed to be the same as in-person ones. |
| Telemedicine communication methods | Only live video is allowed as a means of providing telehealth services. |
If you want to start your telehealth journey, there’s never been a better time to do so than now. Plenty of healthcare workers have experienced nothing but delight since they joined the ever-expanding community of practitioners involved in telemedicine.
The best way to start your telehealth career is to use Curogram.
Curogram is a two-way texting platform that was made specifically for medical purposes. Our platform comes with countless features that aim to make your work more efficient and effective. Being a practitioner is no easy feat—you have to be ready and available to your patients round the clock. That’s why we want to offer you a free 14-day trial during which you can test all of our platform’s features and see for yourself how helpful it is.
If you’d like to know more about Curogram’s features, check these out:
| Curogram allows for HIPAA-compliant texting. | Exchanging text messages through Curogram is fully HIPAA-compliant, which is one of the most critical factors in the majority of states where telemedicine isn’t allowed to be practiced through channels that aren’t HIPAA-compliant. Since we all know that texting is a lot more popular than talking nowadays, we wanted Curogram to be in line with everyone’s preferences—text your staff or patients as much as you like, in the safest way. |
| Curogram has the most advanced appointment reminders on the market. | In this day and age, it’s hard to remember some of the most important things, such as doctor appointments. Everyone’s lives are packed with rushed activities, and that’s why Curogram comes with the most advanced appointment reminder that will ensure your patients’ presence. You can set a 15–30-minute automated reminder for your patients with ease. The most significant benefit of telemedicine is that you don’t have to remind your patients hours and hours ahead because external factors are eliminated. |
| Curogram integrates with some of the most popular EHRs. | EHRs are some of the essential security elements that ensure complete safety against any risks. That’s why Curogram integrates with over 700 of the most popular EHRs. |
| Curogram allows you to replicate real-life workflows. | This feature will allow you to set up multiple virtual clinics and virtual waiting rooms because we wanted our platform to be as simple to get used to as possible. Medical staff are used to highly organized workflows—that’s why we decided on implementing this feature, which will ultimately allow them to adapt to the virtual setting in no time. |
| Curogram facilitates internal communication and file sharing. | Sharing your patients’ records with your staff requires complete safety, which you don’t get with channels such as Zoom. You can be at ease with Curogram, though. Feel free to communicate with your team and exchange any files you like—you will be completely safe! |
| Curogram allows for sending patient intake forms with ease. | Curogram will let you send patient intake forms either via text or secure web forms. The forms will come back to you as PDF files in the blink of an eye! |
One of the biggest advantages of Curogram is that it can integrate within 48 hours because it doesn’t rely on complicated HL7 interfaces. As we’ve mentioned, our goal was to make our platform the most fuss-free one on the market, knowing how hard you need to work and focus on more important things.
Curogram, unlike other channels, such as Skype, will let you spend as much time with your patients as you desire, and have a lot more appointments. This will result in a significant spike in your revenue because, with Curogram, the opportunities are endless. Create your own workflow and follow your natural rhythm—our platform will support you along the way.
If you’re curious to see which EHRs Curogram integrates with, check these out:
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
As soon as you start using Curogram, you will advance your telemedicine journey in the blink of an eye.
","status":"publish","position":7},{"id":"5fea3968fdb402a3d0f1fd84","slug":"history-of-telemedicine","title":"History of Telemedicine","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fdd02e75dfe8c43efac3d77","title":"Telemedicine"},"content":"Although remote healthcare service may appear like a recent trend, the practice of telemedicine dates back over a century. In fact, the history of telemedicine and telehealth closely follows the history and evolution of communication and information technologies.
As health is one of our primary concerns, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that medical professionals quickly recognized the potential of newly emerging technologies and sought to leverage them to facilitate the delivery of healthcare services.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the history of telemedicine and telehealth and answer several questions:
Let’s jump right in and see how it all started!
The practice of telemedicine was kicked off by inventions like the telegraph and the telephone. Although various ways of communicating medical information were used beforehand — such as signal flags on ships to warn about the potentially contagious disease — they were more of an extension of human messengers rather than a way to transmit medical data over large distances.
Modern telemedicine and telehealth, as we look at them today, were brought forth by the introduction of telegraphs and telephones into the mainstream. These two inventions technically allowed anyone to send messages or communicate over large distances, although the telegraph did require some specialized knowledge to operate.
Regardless, the sheer communication speed of telegraphs and telephones was almost immediately recognized and taken advantage of by the military, eventually expanding to everyday life.
The telegraph was a powerful invention that, at the time, completely changed the name of the game when it comes to warfare.
The first recorded use of electronic information for health-related purposes in the U.S. was during the Civil War.
Apart from facilitating strategic planning, the telegraph allowed the Union Army to:
In his book “The Telegraph and the Beginnings of Telemedicine in Australia,” Robert H Eikelboom provides evidence that suggests the telegraph was used in Australia in 1874 to assist the medical care of a wounded person.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, paving the path to a connected world. Although we take phones for granted nowadays, back then, this revolutionary invention had an enormous impact on people’s lives.
It didn’t take long for the telephone to find its uses in healthcare. An 1879 report from The Lancet journal expressed the potential of the telephone in healthcare. It described how a physician was able to listen to a baby’s cough through a telephone to help determine whether the baby had croup.
Over the years, the telephone network rapidly expanded as the signal quality was improved, telephone numbers were assigned to home devices, and other new features were added to the network. In the 1900s, the telephone became widely used as a means of communicating at a distance.
How did this evolution of the telephone network impact the delivery of healthcare services? Here’s a telemedicine history timeline, so we can follow the evolution of telemedicine more easily.
In 1905, Willem Einthoven managed to transmit heart sounds from a hospital to his laboratory using the telephone.
In 1910, cardiologists in New York published the first American review of electrocardiography, reporting that they successfully transmitted electrocardiograms (ECGs) through cables from the wards to the ECG room.
The same year, an English engineer Sidney Brown made tweaks to the telephone that supposedly made it possible for doctors to listen to the sound of a stethoscope a patient held miles away and arrive at an accurate diagnosis.
The Haukeland Hospital in Norway started using two-way radio communication in 1920 to connect physicians with ships and enable medical treatment of seafarers. Several countries followed suit and embraced two-way radio communication in the following decade.
In 1923, police forces in Victoria, Australia, began relying on mobile two-way radios to communicate with colleagues while on duty.
The notion of telemedicine, as we know it today, was first introduced in the Radio News magazine in April 1924. The magazine used the term “radio doctor” to describe remote communication between a patient and a physician through the use of television and a microphone.
Radio News magazine’s imagination of telemedicine
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/BgYjoCXSbaBq_1yvkAUHpiJlkA1O0X9ZNpXZZTbI5k-t7vIHCOc0Uc2I5qtPR1EJPXrWwGfr1kvfYbGk-qAcF7V7ncWxeMn-d45BcFoUvKjFxK-9IOiXUsJDNPkGgJlffKNoR4ba\")
Screenshot taken from Radio News magazine’s April 1924 issue
Although Radio News illustrated a patient receiving medical care via a television, this was the magazine’s imagination of the future, since the vast majority of the U.S. citizens didn’t have TVs installed in their homes at the time.
The magazine’s idea was the first depiction of telemedicine that introduced two-way video communication into the mix, which shed light on the possibilities of telemedicine. Whereas doctors were quite limited regarding the types of services they could offer over the phone, with two-way videos, they could treat patients for a variety of conditions that required a physical exam.
The technology still had to come a long way before two-way live video encounters between doctors and patients were available, and the telecommunications infrastructure had to scale to accommodate large-scale telemedicine projects.
For the next three and a half decades, new ideas were being presented, and telemedicine projects were being pioneered all over the world.
The first use of two-way video communications for telemedicine in the U.S. was spearheaded by the University of Nebraska. In 1959, at the University of Nebraska, clinicians used interactive video communication to transmit neurological examinations across campus to medical students.
This is universally considered the first use of real-time video communication in telemedicine.
Various universities across the United States followed suit, leveraging telemedicine in academic settings, mainly focusing on the transmission of medical data like X-rays, ECGs, stethoscope sounds, etc.
A major breakthrough in telemedicine happened in the 1960s, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), along with Lockheed Corporation, and U.S. Indian Health Service launched a wide-scale telemedicine project.
The main idea behind the Space Technology Applied to Rural Papago Advanced Health Care (STARPAHC) project was to provide easier access to healthcare to American Indian reservations, leveraging the same telecommunications technologies initially intended for NASA’s astronauts.
Satellite communication greatly expanded telemedicine opportunities and facilitated healthcare delivery in rural areas. In 1972, NASA's Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1) enabled telecommunications access for various smaller communities in Alaska, as well as larger hospitals. The success of STARPHAC and the advanced capabilities of satellite communication led to the significant expansion of telemedicine in the following years.
The success of STARPHAC prompted various other government-supported telemedicine projects and initiatives.
The main uses of telemedicine in the 70s and 80s included:
In the ‘80s, radiology stepped up as the first medical specialty to fully embrace telemedicine. This was largely thanks to grant-sponsored projects that enabled radiologists to showcase the efficiency and benefits of telemedicine. This led to radiologists relying on telemedicine more than other medical professionals, as the technology allowed them to receive images for telemedicine consultations.
Information and communication technologies kept advancing over the years, and in 1983, ARPANET adopted the Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP. This prompted bright minds all around the globe to begin assembling the “network of networks” that gradually became what we now know as the Internet.
The TCP/IP was the backbone of the Internet, and seven years later, in 1990, the online ecosystem took on a more tangible form, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. This enabled people all over the globe to access a wealth of information online in the form of websites and hyperlinks.
The advancement of the Internet greatly facilitated the adoption of telemedicine across the world, as it made transmitting medical data and communicating using live video infinitely easier. Up until the 1990s, even the most successful telemedicine projects didn’t survive for over two decades, mainly due to the fact that the equipment was clunky, expensive, offered limited capabilities, and required extensive training to operate properly.
The Internet made the delivery of remote healthcare services a lot easier and much more cost-effective. It greatly improved the effectiveness of telemedicine services and their range by introducing new ways to transmit data over large distances.
The Internet enabled doctors to:
Everyone from computer engineers to common folk quickly recognized the immense power of the Internet, so a lot of effort and resources went into improving the Internet infrastructure. The Internet made an unbelievable amount of information available at incredible speed.
As people started embracing this wonder of the information technology, they became much more informed about health issues and aware of the variety of healthcare options at their disposal.
In the early days of the Internet, the connection was painfully slow. The dial-up Internet required a free phone line, and from today’s perspective, it took forever to load a single web page.
As more people embraced the Internet, they voiced their demands for faster speed, more reliable connections, and lower prices. This resulted in a variety of improvements, including:
With the introduction of broadband Internet, telemedicine and telehealth blew up, since doctors and patients now had all the tools at their disposal to conduct virtual appointments with ease. Doctors could rely on modern equipment such as scanners and digital cameras to assist them in remote patient examinations and could deliver telemedicine services in real-time.
The Internet also enabled medical facilities to create electronic medical records (EMRs), which greatly facilitated healthcare administration.
The rapid improvements of information and communication technologies resulted in wide adoption of telemedicine and telehealth across the United States. As more and more health providers embraced remote ways of delivering medical care, it became apparent that the field had to be regulated.
In order to overcome various hurdles and provide a legislative and regulatory framework for telemedicine and telehealth, the American Telemedicine Association was launched in 1993. The association recognized reimbursement as one of the major requirements for sustaining telemedicine and telehealth.
As a result, many states began developing telemedicine parity laws, alongside their telemedicine programs.
The State of Georgia was among the first states to enact telemedicine-related legislation, back in 1992. The law didn’t establish payment parity for telemedicine service, but it provided a legal framework for creating a statewide telemedicine network, making Georgia the pioneer of modern telemedicine in the U.S.
The program relied on new information technologies to enable telemedicine services at Dodge County Hospital and later grew to include provider and patient medical education, specialty services, and remote healthcare at correctional sites and ambulatory care sites.
Other states followed suit and started developing telemedicine and telehealth programs and enacting legislation to regulate this area of medicine, as remote healthcare services proved to be indispensable for geographically isolated patients and people in the rural United States.
If you’re planning on embracing telemedicine and offering remote healthcare services to your patients, you can check out current telemedicine and telehealth laws of individual states on our blog.
Telemedicine has come a long way since the 1910s when doctors would listen to stethoscope sounds over the phone. With the current state of technology, a licensed medical professional can perform medical examinations through telemedicine software and diagnose and treat patients remotely.
The distance barriers between doctors and patients are all but lifted. Patients can now schedule online appointments with a single click of a mouse or a tap on their phone screen. They don’t have to drive to the nearest doctors and spend hours in waiting rooms — telemedicine has made it possible to receive medical care from home.
The fact of the matter is, modern information technology has dramatically changed how we live our day-to-day lives. We rely on the Internet and mobile apps for anything from enjoying instant entertainment to ordering lunch.
Why should healthcare be any different? Granted, older generations aren’t as tech-savvy as the younger ones, and some state laws and regulations don’t exactly make it easy for providers to start offering remote medical care. Still, both providers and patients are increasingly embracing telemedicine as a valuable and often preferred way of healthcare delivery.
The impact and benefits of telemedicine are undeniable. With an apparent lack of doctors and specialists in the U.S., telemedicine and telehealth are becoming a necessity in recent years. Remote healthcare services greatly improve access to medical care for patients in the rural United States, facilitate remote patient monitoring, and help both doctors and patients save time and money.
How Telemedicine is Transforming Modern Healthcare Delivery | |
| Improves access to healthcare | Telemedicine removes the distance barriers between patients and medical professionals. Through the use of modern telecommunication and information technology, patients in all corners of the world can receive the necessary medical care. |
| Reduces the cost | Both healthcare providers and patients save a lot of money through telemedicine. An average telemedicine encounter is cheaper than an in-person visit, plus it eliminates any secondary expenses like transportation. |
| Saves time | Patients don’t have to take time off work and dedicate an entire day to a visit to the doctor’s. Telemedicine allows them to schedule an appointment at the most convenient time and get the required medical care in minutes. |
| Enables remote patient monitoring | Telemedicine enables doctors to monitor a patient’s medical condition at a distance. The valuable medical data healthcare providers receive from the patient’s location allows them to keep a close eye on a patient’s condition and quickly adjust the treatment when necessary. |
Apart from improving access to healthcare, telemedicine and telehealth allow medical professionals to expand their patient base by providing their services to patients in all corners of their state.
In other words, embracing telemedicine makes it easier for patients in rural and geographically isolated areas to receive the necessary medical care and can increase the revenue of your medical practice.
That said, there are a few things to consider before you embrace telemedicine. The rules and regulations regarding remote healthcare delivery, and you need to make sure your practice is compliant with all applicable laws, regulations, and HIPAA rules before you start admitting patients online.
Curogram is a fully HIPAA compliant telemedicine solution that allows you to set up your virtual clinic in less than 48 hours! It comes with all the built-in safeguards, so you don’t have to worry about the technical details and can start seeing patients right away.
Our platform integrates with virtually any EHR, eliminating the need for manual and double entry. All the relevant medical information is automatically updated in your EHR, so your doctors don’t have to waste time on dull administrative tasks and can see more patients daily.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
With Curogram, you can manage every aspect of your virtual practice from a single web-based dashboard.
Here are a few of Curogram’s features we’re confident you’ll love:
HIPAA compliant two-way SMS platform
Virtual waiting rooms with advanced management tools
Automated appointment reminders
Full EHR integration
Team group chat
Click here to get started today for free. Test out all of Curogram’s features completely risk-free and see why clinics, doctors, and patients love us!
","status":"publish","position":8},{"id":"5fe3952ffdb4027e59f1fd76","slug":"is-google-hangouts-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Google Hangouts HIPAA compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"Google Hangouts is Google’s communication platform that allows for video and voice calling and instant messaging. If you want to start a call, you need to have a Google account, but you can join a call without it. Up to 25 people can join the call using this free app.
Is Google Hangouts HIPAA compliant, and can you use it for telemedicine and telehealth purposes?
If you want to get your medical practice online using Hangouts, you need to enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Google. This agreement exists to ensure the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI) that will be transferred using the platform.
Google will enter into a BAA, but only with G Suite users. When you sign the BAA, Google makes sure that the majority of the Suite apps can be configured so as to be HIPAA compliant. Hangouts is on the list of these apps, but only its chat messaging feature can be made compliant. Hangouts video and voice calling are not included and should be avoided.
Regarding the free, consumer version of Hangouts, Google doesn’t guarantee its compliance. Even if it fulfills all the requirements, it can’t be considered HIPAA compliant unless you sign an agreement with the provider. Google won’t enter into a BAA with a consumer app user, which makes the free version non-compliant by default.
The truth is that the classic version of Hangouts will eventually disappear from G Suite altogether. That’s because Google has introduced two new apps:
A replacement for Hangouts’ voice calling feature already exists in the form of Google Voice.
All three of these replacement apps can adhere to HIPAA rules, but bear in mind that none of Google’s apps are compliant by default. You are responsible for making them compliant, and Google offers a complete guide on how to do that.
Curogram is a telemedicine, two-way messaging solution that is completely HIPAA compliant in and of itself. It has all the required safeguards in place—access and audit controls, encryption, breach notification protocols, ect.—and you won’t have to worry about configuring anything yourself. You can focus on transitioning your practice to a virtual environment without worrying about the security of PHI and legal requirements.
We designed Curogram with healthcare professionals in mind, so unlike Hangouts, it offers a variety of features specific to healthcare needs. Hangouts may be familiar, but our platform is infinitely more efficient and practical for telemedicine and telehealth purposes.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a Notification of Enforcement Discretion for Telehealth Remote Communications During the COVID-19 Nationwide Public Health Emergency.
The Notification put forward by the OCR allows for a more lenient use of remote communication technologies during the COVID-19 national emergency. This means that providers can use any non-public-facing product for telehealth, even if it isn’t fully HIPAA compliant, during the national public health emergency without risking penalties.
The Notification of Enforcement Discretion may seem like good news to those not used to remote medical work. It takes the stress of finding a HIPAA compliant platform off your shoulders and gets you more options.
The truth is this healthcare act exists for a good reason. You should still choose a HIPAA compliant solution because:
If you still believe you’ll be fine using Hangouts for telemedicine, here are some problems you’ll encounter:
The single greatest misgiving of this Google’s platform is the inability to transfer files. You can send pictures, which means your patients can snap a photo of a medical report or another document, but that’s as far as you can go with document sharing.
Google recommends uploading files to Drive and linking to them in your chat. This is not a secure way to transfer PHI, and you have to involve another app for such a simple task.
Curogram doesn’t only allow you to send files in a completely HIPAA secure way, but it also makes it easy to send various kinds of medical documents. Before the appointment, patients have to fill an electronic intake form they’ll receive in a text, which doctors can then view in the PDF form. You can send us your preferred intake form, and we’ll digitize it for you. Patients can even e-sign forms via their mobile devices.
Our mobile app for communicating with patients is the only HIPAA compliant solution of the kind thus far.
Post-appointment, you can send pre-made documents, such as exercise instructions, prescriptions, and pull visit summaries directly from the EHR, which leads us to the next point.
You can’t sync Hangouts with EHRs, which is a major downside for a telemedicine solution. Your staff will lose a lot of time having to enter all the data twice, and you won’t be able to sync your patients’ visits with their demographic data.
As a platform made for medical professionals, Curogram integrates with almost any EHR there is. Apart from saving you a lot of time, EHR integration allows you to document and access anything easily and not have files scattered around.
It takes less than 48 hours to integrate with any EHR thanks to Curogram’s proprietary technology. This is a great advantage over other telemedicine platforms as they can take months to complete an integration.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
Kareo | NextGen |
Epic | Prime Clinical Systems |
DrChrono | eClinicalWorks |
Allscripts | Practice Fusion |
AdvancedMD | Greenway |
With Hangouts, there’s no way to prepare your patients for the appointment nor your doctors for their patients. You can’t send check-in forms via the platform, and there’s no way to know whether the patient is ready when you video call them. They could easily miss the call altogether if they don’t have Hangouts open in their browser.
Curogram offers a virtual waiting room where patients can get ready. This room allows doctors to see how many patients are waiting for an appointment and if they are ready. In the meantime, nurses and MAs visit patients in the waiting room to check them in and prepare them so that doctors don’t have to waste any time. While they wait, they can attach any documents the doctor may need to go through during the visit.
When a patient shows up for an in-person visit, there are internal workflows that make everything go smoothly. These workflows are different for doctors and nurses as they are both involved in the process. There’s usually a lot of going in and out of the room as everyone does their part.
Hangouts makes replicating this process impossible. If a nurse or MA calls the patient, they can’t leave the call to let them prepare or allow the doctor to enter. The call will end when the host leaves. This means that mimicking the in-person process would involve calling and hanging up several times, which could be frustrating for the patient.
Curogram supports different workflows for staff, doctors, and special doctors. Our platform makes the process streamlined and minimizes the time doctors have to spend worrying about technicalities. They go in and out of appointments while the staff takes care of the rest as they would in person.
During the appointment, doctors can also have assistants taking notes for them. This way, they can truly dedicate their undivided attention to the patient and make the visit as efficient as possible.
You can’t schedule meetings in Hangouts, so you can’t use the app to make automated appointment reminders. You’d have to use another app for scheduling and reminders or have a staff member call or text patients. This is both unnecessary and time-consuming.
Even when it comes to in-person visits, patient reminders are important, but telemedicine visits reminders are essential. If a patient has to carve out time to leave their home, sit behind the wheel, and get to the clinic, they are less likely to forget that they have an appointment that day.
An online appointment is different because a patient could be immersed in a Netflix show or a house chore minutes before the scheduled visit. They could easily forget about it.
Curogram’s HIPAA compliant SMS messaging platform allows you to send automated reminders 30 or even 15 minutes before the visit. Curogram is currently sending 500,000+ reminders per month, saving providers tons of money they would have lost on no-shows.
Google Hangouts | Curogram | |
Document sharing | No | Yes |
EHR integration | No | Yes |
Patient check-in | No | Yes |
Workflows for doctors and staff | No | Yes |
Automated visit reminders | No | Yes |
For medical workers, transitioning to remote work makes a huge difference. It can be disorienting and difficult, especially if you’re struggling with inappropriate software that makes things even more complicated. That said, here are five things to consider when transitioning your medical practice online:
Not all your patients are tech-savvy—in fact, the majority of the older ones probably aren’t. If they are required to install and set up an app before the appointment, they will likely give up. Don’t take steps like downloading an app for granted. It may be easy to do for the majority, but many older people don’t even own smartphones.
Curogram solves this issue by auto-generating visit links. When it’s time for their appointment, patients only have to click the link, and the video will open in their browser.
If the telemedicine platform of your choice turns your employees’ responsibilities upside down, they’ll need a lot more time to adjust. It’s essential that your solution makes doctor and staff workflows similar to those they are used to.
With Curogram, you’ll have all the right tools to help everyone resume their roles from home and not have doctors waste time on administrative conundrums.
Your staff should be able to communicate with patients through a single platform. If you use a solution such as Google Hangouts for video appointments, you won’t be able to use it for scheduling and sending reminders as well. Your staff might have to communicate with patients via their personal phones.
Our platform is an all-in-one solution that allows you to schedule and reschedule visits, send reminders, host appointments, and more. It utilizes a two-way SMS messaging system. You send your patients SMS messages from a Curogram-generated number that they can also respond to. You can see all their responses in one place.
Your staff will need to have a communication platform where the data they transfer is secure. If you don’t find a telemedicine solution that incorporates this feature, they will have to find an alternative. They might end up using various chats that are not HIPAA compliant and compromise patients’ PHI.
Curogram provides a HIPAA compliant staff messaging feature. Your staff can talk about work, mental health, or just chat away using Curogram’s platform. All their communication will go through one platform and will be completely encrypted.
Your staff will need to get adjusted to the new work environment—their home. There are many potential distractions to avoid and rules to set in order to be able to work efficiently. You can help them adjust by having work-from-home policies in place, such as:
Transitioning to telemedicine is not going to be easy, especially if you rely on a solution not designed for use in healthcare, such as Google Hangouts. Here are three challenges you’ll experience and how to overcome them:
One of the reasons why you might see fewer patients is their confusion with the communication technology you choose. If they find it hard and complicated to get to the appointment, many of them will just give up.
Another problem lies in the fact that your doctors might get stuck with technical and administrative issues. A poor telemedicine solution will result in ten times fewer visits due to inadequate organization.
With Curogram, you’ll be able to streamline the whole process so that doctors don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes on each appointment. This will allow them to see a larger number of patients, and your patients will be happy because your staff will provide them with proper guidance.
All the patients you’ll lose due to a poor telemedicine solution will lead to a huge loss of revenue. Your costs will exceed your earnings if a doctor is only able to see a few patients a day.
Think about all the time that will be wasted due to inappropriate staff utilization if you choose Hangouts or a similar solution. Doctors will have to figure out how to onboard patients themselves, and nurses will be stuck on the phone reminding patients about their appointments.
You can avoid all these problems with Curogram. Some of the providers using our platform have experienced a 75% decrease in no-shows thanks to our auto-reminders. Imagine all the money they would have lost, but they haven’t. In only a couple of months, your phone call volume will drop by 50%, allowing your staff to focus on other things.
Transitioning to remote work will be a colossal change for your employees, and they are bound to experience a lot of stress in the first couple of weeks. That’s why it’s important to let them know that they can discuss these issues freely and be heard.
A staff-friendly platform, such as Curogram, will make it easier for them to start working from home by allowing them to retain their old workflows and have a safe space to talk everything through. Having to use several platforms for different tasks would only add to the stress.
Telemedicine is quickly growing in popularity, thanks in part to the recognition it received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although telemedicine has been around for decades, both patients and providers are increasingly becoming aware of the impact and, frankly, the necessity of remote healthcare services.
The majority of the states in the U.S. are looking towards telemedicine as an alternative solution to in-person encounters.
The two main reasons why states have embraced telemedicine are:
As more and more patients and healthcare providers embrace telemedicine, it’s becoming clear that it is not only a viable alternative to in-person care but that it may also be a preferred way of receiving healthcare services for many patients.
It’s not only the emergency situations and lack of access that prompt people to schedule online appointments with their doctors. Younger, tech-savvy generations realize the convenience of telemedicine and welcome the opportunity to leverage modern technologies to make visits to the doctor faster, easier, and more affordable.
With telemedicine, patients don’t have to worry about travel, spend hours in waiting rooms, or take days off work to receive the required medical care. They can attend a telemedicine appointment from home and get a diagnosis and treatment in 15–30 minutes, rather than devoting an entire day to an in-person visit.
Telemedicine remains a mystery for a lot of people. Older populations are often wary of technology, and even younger patients, who are well accustomed to relying on the Internet and various apps in their daily life, might be doubtful of the doctors’ ability to treat them online.
Some healthcare providers might even find the notion of remote medical care ridiculous and would hold onto the belief that nothing can replace an in-person examination. Although various conditions do require immediate, in-person medical care, there are a number of cases where remote healthcare services will not only do the trick but are also a better alternative.
For example, telemedicine isn’t appropriate for emergency situations, such as strokes, heart attacks, broken bones, lacerations, etc.
Still, remote healthcare services are quite effective when it comes to follow-ups and treating various less severe medical conditions, such as:
The capabilities of modern telecommunication technology enable doctors to examine, diagnose, and treat patients in the same way as if the patient were physically present. High definition cameras, for instance, allow doctors to observe the patient’s symptoms and arrive at an accurate diagnosis. Patients can also upload HD images when necessary, giving the doctors all the information they need to prescribe appropriate treatments.
It’s important to understand that the goal of telemedicine isn’t to replace in-person medical care. Instead, telemedicine aims to aid traditional healthcare. It provides a more convenient way to deliver and receive medical care, facilitating follow-up care and the treatment of a variety of less severe medical conditions.
To help you better understand what telemedicine can offer to both patients and healthcare providers, let’s take a look at what telemedicine is and how it works.
The two terms you’ll most often hear whenever there’s talk of remote healthcare services are “telemedicine” and “telehealth.” Most people, and even some state laws, use the terms interchangeably when talking about any type of healthcare services that are delivered remotely.
Both telemedicine and telehealth rely on telecommunication and information technologies to enable healthcare providers to deliver their services to patients at a distance.
There is one crucial difference between the two terms. Telehealth is a more encompassing term that includes an array of medical services and also covers a range of non-clinical events, like:
Telemedicine strictly refers to remote healthcare services that include examination, diagnosis, and treatment.
Put simply, telehealth often refers to remote medical education, remote doctor-patient consultations, and ongoing medical care for existing conditions, while telemedicine implies diagnosis and treatment based on the symptoms the patient is exhibiting.
The difference isn’t just semantic. One of the crucial areas in remote healthcare is reimbursement, and both patients and healthcare providers need to know which services are covered by the patient’s insurance plan and how telemedicine and telehealth services will be billed. Different states have varying laws and policies regarding the reimbursement of remote healthcare services, so it’s important to make the distinction between the two terms. You can read our article on telemedicine vs. telehealth for more information.
Apart from delivering healthcare services to patients remotely, telemedicine also includes other activities that facilitate the delivery of said services.
The three modalities of telemedicine include:
The first modality of telemedicine—live videoconferencing—refers to utilizing a two-way, live video communication platform to provide/receive remote medical care. The key here is that the technology must enable healthcare providers and patients to communicate in real-time and that the video capabilities of the telemedicine solution the provider is using enable them to arrive at an accurate diagnosis.
Store-and-forward refers to the transmission and storing of medical data. The technology is most commonly used by physicians to share a patient’s medical information with specialists at a different location. This enables a patient’s primary healthcare provider to get a specialist's opinion quickly and adjust the treatment accordingly, without requiring the patient to visit the specialist in person.
Remote patient monitoring refers to utilizing a variety of devices to monitor a patient’s medical condition at a distance. RPM gives healthcare providers valuable insights into their patients’ medical conditions in real-time.
This means patients can stay at home, while the devices continuously send medical information to the provider’s office. The devices detect and report any changes in the patient’s condition (e.g., a sudden increase in their blood pressure), allowing the provider to easily adjust the treatment when necessary, without the patient having to come in for an in-person visit.
In this section, we’ll focus on live videoconferencing to explain how telemedicine works in practice. Keep in mind that the way in which telemedicine works will largely depend on the telemedicine solution your practice opts for.
There are a few steps that commonly occur during any telemedicine visit:
Although telemedicine sounds pretty straightforward on paper, there are quite a few things providers need to figure out before they can start offering remote healthcare services to their patients.
Before you can start practicing telemedicine, you must:
First and foremost, you need to review what types of services you intend to offer via telemedicine. Then, you should choose a telemedicine solution that offers all the necessary capabilities and features that will enable you to treat patients online efficiently.
For solo practitioners and smaller clinics, a simple two-way video platform will do the trick. You just need to make sure it’s HIPAA compliant.
Providers looking for an all-encompassing solution that will allow them to set up a virtual clinic should consider their existing workflows and find a telemedicine platform that supports them.
Curogram is a comprehensive telemedicine solution, designed specifically for healthcare professionals. It mimics your in-person workflows and provides advanced waiting room management tools, allowing your doctors and medical staff to easily transition into an online environment.
Curogram also includes an easy-to-use two-way messaging platform, allowing you to stay connected with your patients. When a patient schedules an online appointment, they will receive an SMS with a link to join your virtual clinic at the scheduled time. Patients can always respond to it with a simple text if they need to reschedule or have any questions.
On top of that, Curogram also sends out automated appointment reminders to ensure your patients don’t miss the scheduled appointment.
Another key feature of Curogram is EHR integration. Our platform integrates with virtually any EHR, allowing you to easily connect Curogram with your existing system. This integration eliminates the need for manual or double entry since all the relevant medical data is automatically updated in your EHR after each visit.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Before you share any medical information via a telemedicine solution, you have to make sure that the solution you opted for allows you to do so in a HIPAA compliant manner.
The main concern of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regarding telemedicine is how the information is transferred and stored, and who has access to the sensitive medical data. The data must be encrypted and protected, both in transit and at rest, and you must create policies that clearly define who can access the patients’ medical data, and under what circumstances.
This means most commercial videoconferencing platforms are out of the question. They don’t have the required technological, administrative, and security safeguards required to meet the HIPAA Rules and Regulations.
The fines for violating HIPAA rules are astronomical, ranging anywhere from a couple thousand dollars to over a million, depending on the severity of the violation. That’s why, when creating Curogram, we made sure our platform is fully HIPAA compliant and comes with built-in safeguards that enable you to safely practice telemedicine and guarantee the security of your patients’ protected health information.
We’ve taken care of all the technical details, so you can have peace of mind and can start seeing patients online immediately.
Another thing to consider, before you start practicing telemedicine, is a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). This agreement details how the third-party provider—the company supplying the telemedicine solution—stores ePHI. If a provider refuses to sign a BAA with you, that means they cannot guarantee the safety and security of your patients’ data.
With Curogram, signing a BAA is a formality. Curogram employs the latest encryption technology, has all the built-in safeguards, and enables two-way authentication, ensuring the medical data of your patients is 100% secure.
When it comes to telemedicine—convenience is the key. That’s why it’s always best to opt for a solution that’s easy to use, both by your doctors and medical staff, as well as your patients.
Overly complex telemedicine solutions might take months to set up and integrate with your existing management system, given the high level of customization required. Then, after you get everything up and running, you’d have to invest more time and money on employee training. If you fail to do so, your less tech-savvy employees might unintentionally cause data breaches.
You also need to think about how your patients will use the telemedicine solution you opt for. If they have to go through a tedious sign-up process, download an app, and figure out how to navigate an in-app menu, chances are they’ll look elsewhere.
With Curogram, you don’t have to worry about any of the above! Our platform is quick and easy to set up, and you can have your virtual clinic running at full steam in less than 48 hours.
Curogram allows you to manage your virtual clinic, communicate with patients, share PHI, send automated appointment reminders, and more—all from a single, web-based dashboard.
Curogram is also incredibly easy to use for patients. All they need to do to join a virtual appointment is to click a link they receive in an SMS. They’ll immediately be directed to your virtual waiting room, where your MAs and medical staff can onboard them and prepare them for the online visit with a doctor.
Any available doctor can initiate a video call with a patient once their status is set to “ready.” After the visit, patients will receive a link to download the visit summary and any other relevant medical information in a secure environment.
Another thing to keep in mind that states have different laws and regulations regarding telemedicine and telehealth. If you’re planning on providing remote healthcare services to patients, take the time to familiarize yourself with your state’s telemedicine laws, rules, and regulations.
This doesn’t mean you have to spend a month reading through every sentence of each applicable law, but you should do your research. We’ve covered telemedicine and telehealth laws and reimbursement policies in every state on our blog, and we strongly suggest reading the article that covers the state your practice is in.
Telemedicine is quickly gaining popularity among both patients and healthcare providers. Embracing telemedicine will help you retain your existing customers by offering them a faster, more convenient way to receive medical care.
It will also help expand your customer base since telemedicine removes any distance barriers between you and your patients. You’ll be able to offer your services to people in rural areas and geographically isolated locations, increasing the revenue of your practice in the process.
The bottom line is—telemedicine improves access to medical care, gives patients a more convenient, cheaper alternative to in-person visits, and helps boost your revenue. In other words, everyone stands to benefit from telemedicine.
As you’ve seen in this article, with Curogram, setting up your virtual clinic and conducting telemedicine encounters is quick, easy, and simple. You can get started in less than 48 hours!
Why healthcare providers love Curogram | |
| Seamless EHR integration | Curogram fully integrates with your EHR and eliminates the need for manual and double entry. All the relevant medical information is automatically updated following each visit. |
| A HIPAA-compliant two-way messaging platform | Curogram includes a two-way messaging platform that allows you to communicate with your patients easily, in a HIPAA compliant manner. |
| Automated appointment reminders | With Curogram, you can create templated text messages that the platform sends out to patients before the scheduled visit. This simple, yet extremely effective feature, helps reduce no-shows by 75%! |
| Workflows you’re used to | Curogram mimics your existing in-person workflows, allowing you to transition to a virtual environment with ease. Our advanced waiting room management tools facilitate patient onboarding and make it easy for doctors to jump in and out of video calls. |
Learn more about Curogram and test out all of its features in practice —
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","status":"publish","position":9},{"id":"5fe39694fdb40263eff1fd77","slug":"is-gotomeeting-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is GoToMeeting HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"GoToMeeting is a web-hosted app for virtual meetings by LogMeIn. You can use it for online meetings, video conferencing, voice calling, screen sharing, and more.
It can host up to 100 participants, and you can record the sessions. One of the best features of GoToMeeting is its application-sharing option that allows you to share only a specific app instead of the whole screen.
This video meeting solution seems to have a great potential for use in telehealth and telemedicine. We’ll explore if GoToMeeting is a viable solution for healthcare professionals and if it meets all the HIPAA standards.
If you want to use a communication app for transferring identifying patient data known as protected health information (PHI), you need to make sure that the solution adheres to the HIPAA regulations.
These third-party applications can’t be HIPAA compliant in and of themselves, but they can vouch for the safety of your data by entering into a business associate agreement (BAA) with you. This agreement is the first step in adhering to the HIPAA rules.
LogMeIn, as the owner of GoToMeeting, will sign a BAA with you, which is a safe indicator that the app can be made HIPAA compliant. The provider wouldn’t enter into such a contract with anyone if they knew their product doesn’t offer the possibility of enabling HIPAA-prescribed safeguards.
GoToMeeting can be made HIPAA compliant, but bear in mind that it doesn’t have all the safeguards in place by default. You are responsible for making sure that you’re using the app in a compliant way, and luckily, LogMeIn provides a guide on how to do so.
Here are GoToMeeting’s technical measures that can ensure full HIPAA compliance:
Access is controlled in the following ways:
All GoToMeeting activities are logged, which means you can maintain an audit trail prescribed by HIPAA. This trail makes it easier to identify breaches and other unauthorized access. Admins have web-based access to these logs as well as to other reporting tools.
The integrity of PHI transmitted through GoToMeeting is easy to protect as you can’t share files directly via the platform. Admins can share their screen showcasing PHI, and they can choose not to share keyboard and mouse control with participants, ensuring that PHI remains intact. All data that is transmitted via the platform is protected by HMAC-SHA-1 message authentication codes.
Account managers use unique emails and passwords to log into their accounts. Meeting access is protected in multiple ways—by unique meeting codes and optional passwords, as well as by only allowing access to the invited participants. If you’re sharing your screen, participants can’t modify the presented apps and data unless you allow them to.
All communication is protected by the industry-standard AES 256-bit encryption.
As you can see, whether or not GoToMeeting is compliant depends on how the account managers use the app.
GoToMeeting can be made compliant, but our platform adheres to the HIPAA rules by default. Curogram was designed with healthcare professionals in mind, and it allows you to focus on doing your job without having to worry about accidentally violating the law. All the safeguards are already in place, so you don’t have to configure the app in a certain way in order to avoid penalties.
Apart from being 100% HIPAA compliant, Curogram comes with many perks that are specific to the needs of medical professionals. You can set up your virtual clinic with it that will mimic your regular workflows and allow both doctors and patients to have a smooth experience. Curogram is also a two-way messaging platform that lets you text PHI in a HIPAA compliant way.
GoToMeeting is a secure platform, but aside from that, it doesn’t offer much as a telemedicine solution. Here are some problems you will encounter if you start using it:
If you’re looking for a telemedicine solution, you are aware of the fact that you and your patients need to exchange a bunch of different documents before, during, and after appointments. There’s no way to do that with GoToMeeting. You can share your screen and allow the other side to view the document, but you can’t really send it.
Viewing the file is not enough most of the time as it’s important to keep a record of all the documentation tied to a specific visit. On the other end of the appointment, your patients may need to get a prescription, labs, or instructions and be able to save these files and not just view them.
Curogram allows you to share documents in a completely HIPAA-secure way, both with your patients and internally. Our platform makes it especially easy to send medical files. We can digitize your standard forms so that patients can open them on their smartphones and even e-sign them. There’s no need to waste time printing and scanning papers.
You can send your patients web-based intake forms in advance to save you both some time on the day of the appointment. These will come back to you as PDFs automatically. Curogram allows you to send various post-visit files with a click, such as prescriptions, special instructions, and others. The best part is that you can pull out documents straight from your EHR.
The waiting room is an integral part of any doctor’s appointment, regardless of whether it’s an in-person or an online one. It is an indispensable way to control traffic surges at your online clinic, queue your patients, and get them ready for appointments.
GoToMeeting doesn’t have this option. Doctors and nurses can’t see who’s waiting to be seen in a single place. Nurses or MAs would have to click each individual bridge to see if the patient has arrived and get them ready.
Curogram has a virtual waiting room that helps you line up your patients and streamline the whole process. You can see how many patients are waiting in this area and who they are. Nurses can join them in the waiting room to prepare them for the visit with the doctor. In the meantime, doctors can see if the patients are ready or still with a nurse.
The waiting room brings order into your workday and makes the virtual clinic experience similar to physical patient visits.
In-person visits are not as simple as patients popping in and out of appointments. There are at least three steps in the process:
At least a couple of medical personnel are involved in the appointment procedure. You can’t just have doctors getting on calls with patients and doing everything themselves. That would be a huge waste of their time, and you’d be stuck with a serious staff misutilization problem.
GoToMeeting doesn’t support these established clinic workflows. It would be difficult to have doctors and staff coming in and out of calls. Once the host leaves the meeting, the call is over. This is a problem if you want to recreate your staff’s usual duties online.
With GoToMeeting, you would need to involve multiple meeting links—one for the nurse, another one for the doctor, and potentially even a third one for the nurse to wrap up the visit. This would complicate things further and discourage your patients from visiting your online clinic.
Curogram makes the appointment procedure as natural as it can be online. The patient doesn’t have to worry about multiple bridges. When they schedule the appointment, they get one visit link. Once the appointment is due, all they have to do is click the link, and it will take them straight to your waiting room. From there on, your staff can proceed to guide them through the process as they would in person.
Our platform also supports multi-provider visits, so if several medical professionals need to be present at once, they can. Some doctors like to have assistants with them so that they can focus on treating the patient, while the assistant takes notes. This can also be arranged with Curogram.
One of the major disadvantages of using a non-healthcare-specific solution is the fact that it is unlikely to integrate with your EHR. This feature would allow you to keep one schedule and not have to enter all the data twice. GoToMeeting doesn’t offer this option, which makes it highly impractical.
Curogram can integrate with your EHR to offer you even better functionality. Our platform can integrate with almost any EHR there is. The best thing about it is that you won’t have to wait for a couple of months for the integration process to finish. Curogram integrates with your EHR in about 48 hours thanks to our proprietary technology.
Some Curogram EHR integrations | |
AdvancedMD | Epic |
Practice Fusion | DrChrono |
eClinicalWorks | Prime Clinical Systems |
Greenway | NextGen |
Kareo | Allscripts |
If you’re transitioning to telemedicine or adding online appointments to your services, you need to have a practical way of reminding your patients of their online visits. Virtual appointments are much easier to forget because the patient doesn’t need to get there physically. All they have to do is connect through their device of choice.
You can connect your GoToMeeting account to your calendar, but you can’t send auto-reminders to patients. A staff member would have to waste their time calling or texting each patient individually, or you’d have to hope that the patient will remember, which would result in a bunch of no-shows. If you do assign a staff member to take care of reminders, they could make mistakes and jumble up your schedule.
With Curogram, you won’t have to worry about missed appointments. Our platform generates visit reminders automatically. All you have to do is set up the frequency and type of messages. Your patients will receive these via SMS, which is almost a guarantee that they will read it in time as the open rates for SMS are as high as 98%.
Curogram is currently sending more than 500,000 auto-reminders a month, saving our customers thousands of dollars that they would lose due to no-shows.
GoToMeeting | Curogram | |
Secure file-sharing feature | No | Yes |
Virtual waiting room | No | Yes |
Doctors’ and staff’s workflows | No | Yes |
EHR integration | No | Yes |
Automated visit reminders | No | Yes |
Transitioning to telemedicine can be a challenge, especially if your staff doesn’t have experience working from home. There are numerous challenges you’ll face at the beginning, but you shouldn’t let them discourage you.
Going remote is a huge change, and you’ll adjust to it in no time if you’re properly prepared and use a feature-rich platform. Here are some problems to look out for:
Your patients may feel reluctant to try telemedicine, but you can show them that it is time-efficient and much more convenient than physical visits in many cases. If you decide to go for a non-healthcare-specific solution such as GoToMeeting, you might not be as convincing as you’d like to be.
Your patients don’t want to waste time dealing with multiple links and having to use a couple of communication channels—one for scheduling, another one for the appointment, yet another one for safe PHI transfer, etc.
With Curogram, your patient satisfaction levels will go through the roof as they will see how simple the process is. Not even your older patients will have trouble hopping on a call and going through the appointment online.
Your staff will need some time to figure out how to transfer their general duties to the online clinic. They may find themselves feeling lost for some time, but you can help them adjust by providing the following:
If doctors have to deal with a lot of technical details, they will have less time to actually see patients. Choosing an inappropriate telemedicine solution will force your doctors to onboard the patient themselves and do a lot of additional administrative work. This is not a doctor’s job, but some apps leave you no other choice.
Curogram will allow doctors to only do what’s their job. This way, they will be able to see as many patients as they would be able to tend to in person. A patient’s visit can last up to an hour or more. The doctor’s part should not take more than 15 minutes.
Curogram’s waiting room and workflow support will make the whole process streamlined and make it possible for doctors to go in and out of appointments smoothly.
A poor telemedicine solution that wasn’t really intended for use in healthcare can lead to a steep drop in revenue. If your patients are not satisfied, they will go to a competitor with a more convenient platform and better workflows.
Failure to remind your patients about visits will lead to no-shows, which may be the number one reason clinics lose money when they go remote.
Staff misutilization is yet another issue that will result in a decrease in revenue in the long run. If your nurses are stuck on the phone and doctors have to deal with the administration and IT, they can’t do their job.
Curogram keeps your clinic up and running and allows everyone to focus on their duties. Your patients will be satisfied, and our smart auto-reminders will reduce your no-show rates by 75%. Our two-way SMS messaging system will make your communication with patients much more efficient and will slash your phone call rates in half.
Healthcare still relies on fax machines. It is a miracle that this obsolete piece of technology entered the twenty-first century at all. Medical professionals are some of the rare people who have to worry about jammed up paper, blurry text, and busy telephone lines.
If you’re considering getting rid of your machine and trying online faxing, HelloFax might be your best option. It’s one of the most popular Internet faxing services out there.
Healthcare providers need to make sure that the solution they intend to use to transfer patient information adheres to the HIPAA rules, or they might face severe penalties. Is HelloFax HIPAA compliant, and how does it work?
HelloFax offers online, paperless faxing that allows you to send and receive faxes without the clunky machine. You may be wondering how it’s different from email. Online faxing still uses fax numbers to transfer documents, so the other side can receive them on their fax machine. With HelloFax, you can continue to use your old fax number.
There are two ways to send faxes via HelloFax:
If you intend to send protected health information (PHI) using HelloFax, you need to ensure that this service can be configured to be HIPAA compliant. Communication channels such as HelloFax are considered your business associates (BAs) and need to have the same safeguards in place as you to keep PHI secure.
HelloFax seems to be using many of the HIPAA-prescribed security measures to protect your data, including:
If you want to access your account, you need to enter your unique username and password. Only those authorized by you can access your data.
HelloFax utilizes SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to make sure your documents are secure in transit.
All your documents are stored and protected by AES 256-bit encryption while at rest. This is considered a high level of security by HIPAA standards. Each document is further secured by regular master key rotation. This means that even if someone managed to access the hard drive, they would still be unable to decrypt your sensitive data.
The HelloFax physical data center has strict controls in place that ensure the physical security of their hard drives.
Even if HelloFax has all the HIPAA-prescribed safeguards in place, there is one crucial requirement that the provider needs to fulfill to be considered compliant—they need to enter a business associate agreement (BAA) with you.
There’s no reason to believe that HelloFax would sign a BAA with you. Their sister company HelloSign announced in 2017 that they would start offering this possibility to their customers. The relationship between these two services is not clear as HelloFax has a stand-alone site and is also listed among the products offered by HelloSign. Whether or not this means that you could get a business associate contract for HelloFax remains unclear.
Since we can’t know for sure if you could get a BAA for HelloFax, we can’t say for sure if this service is HIPAA compliant. Experience has taught us that, when a provider is willing to sign this agreement, they usually display that information on their site proudly. That’s why we recommend you avoid this faxing service.
Healthcare professionals don’t need to rely on faxing for inter-office communication anymore. Curogram is a much better solution suitable for the twenty-first century. Our platform is a telemedicine and texting app that can help you communicate internally, with patients, or with other providers in a completely HIPAA-secure way.
Curogram can be your state-of-the-art substitute for faxing. It comes with many more functionalities that your practice will benefit from, such as EHR integration, auto-reminders, patient surveys, etc.
According to the Notification of Enforcement Discretion issued by the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), healthcare providers are allowed to use non-HIPAA compliant remote communication channels during the coronavirus nationwide emergency. The Notification has been put forward to make sure that everyone will have access to medical care.
This temporary regulation explicitly mentions “audio or video communication technology” in the context of treating patients, but it doesn’t say anything about other means of communication. It seems that the Notification only relates to telemedicine solutions for remote patient care, and it probably doesn’t include faxing.
If you are considering using HelloFax even if the company is unwilling to enter into a BAA with you during the COVID-19 pandemic, we advise against it. If you can’t justify the use of the faxing platform under this legislation, you could incur hefty fines.
If you’re still not convinced that you should leave faxing in the past, consider the following problems you’ll encounter using HelloFax that Curogram can solve:
A healthcare solution that doesn’t integrate with your EHR is a waste of time. You’ll waste tons of time on duplicate data entry. You also won’t be able to send documents directly from your EMR.
Curogram integrates with more than 700 EMRs to make your job easier. Thanks to our special technology, the integration process is done in less than 48 hours. Other solutions could take as much as six months. The EHR integration allows you to pull documents from your system with a couple of clicks.
Some Curogram EHR integrations | |
|---|---|
Epic | DrChrono |
Allscripts | Greenway |
eClinicalWorks | Kareo |
Practice Fusion | Prime Clinical Systems |
AdvancedMD | NextGen |
Faxing is a limited communication option in general. Taking it online only means you don’t have to deal with a machine and a bunch of paper folders—the rest stays the same. You can only send and receive documents and can’t even communicate what you need to be faxed.
If a physician needs some lab results, they would have to call in and ask for them or text the office. This means that HelloFax only adds to the number of apps and platforms you need to use to get a simple message across.
With Curogram, you get an all-in-one messaging platform that allows you to reach anyone easily and send documents containing PHI in a HIPAA secure way. You can connect with other providers using our platform and IMessage them whenever you need a file. The transfer is instant, and you won’t have to worry about your file being intercepted because everything is encrypted.
Online faxing is still faxing because it uses telephone networks to transmit data—otherwise, it would be called messaging. This means that you can send faxes only to the people who own a fax machine or utilize an online service like you. They don’t have to use the same provider, but they still need a fax number you can enter when sending a fax.
This is another limitation of faxing. If you need a solution that will allow you to send PHI to other doctors and patients alike, you shouldn’t go for HelloFax. Apart from medical practices, not many people still own a fax machine, and your patients are unlikely to be subscribed to an online service. HelloFax gives five free pages to those who want to try it for free, but that’s not worth creating an account.
Curogram’s messaging option makes it easy to contact anyone, be it other practices or patients. It is also convenient for staff-to-staff communication, which can come in handy if you have offices in multiple locations.
Through our HIPAA compliant texting app you can reach anyone directly from the dashboard. Your patients will receive your messages as SMS texts, so they won’t need to subscribe to anything.
As we have said, although it’s a bit more practical than traditional faxing, online faxing still goes through telephone lines. Phone lines can get busy, and when they do, a fax can’t go through. This means that your documents will fail to fax, and you’ll have to retry until you succeed. This can be daunting.
Since your HelloFax account connects to your mail, you’ll receive an email telling you if the fax has gone through or not. You may also check the status of your fax on your account. The best you can do is keep trying as fax lines in medical practices tend to get terribly busy.
Having to invest so much effort into sending a document shouldn’t be a twenty-first-century issue. With Curogram, you can IM anyone at any time and get a reply instantly. Attaching a document is only a couple of clicks of your time, and the transfer is immediate. There’s no need to waste your precious energy trying to fax a file.
A lack of a mobile app is one of the greatest shortcomings of this service. If you want to snap a photo of something and fax it, it will be a lot more complicated than it has to be. HelloFax proposes using their email-to-fax feature to send faxes using your phone. This is better than nothing, but it’s far from ideal as you can’t access your account if you need it.
Curogram has both provider and patient mobile apps. You can open it on any device you choose—laptop, phone, or tablet—and send files from there. This is a great way for your staff to communicate in a secure way wherever they are.
Our patient mobile app is the first such app that is completely HIPAA-secure. Your patients can take a photo of their insurance card or another document and send it to you without worrying about security. You can also send files to them, and all these documents will be stored in-app.
HelloFax | Curogram | |
Diverse communication options | No | Yes |
EHR integration | No | Yes |
Can reach anyone | No | Yes |
Fast data transfer | No | Yes |
Mobile app | No | Yes |
Curogram can take your practice to a new level by offering numerous features that can automate time-consuming tasks and increase your patient satisfaction. There’s so much more to it than safe document transfer. Here are some functions we haven’t talked about above:
As Curogram syncs with your schedule, it can send auto-generated appointment reminders to your patients. You can customize these to a tee by many different things, such as the visit type, office location, reminder frequency, etc.
Curogram is projected to send ten million auto-reminders in 2020, saving our customers thousands of dollars by eliminating no-shows. Curogram users reported experiencing a 75% drop in failures to show up.
Online reviews and ratings are essential for the reputation of a medical practice. Before a patient decides to put their health in your hands, they will at least skim through your Google reviews. A single nasty comment can deter dozens of people from choosing you.
Our platform has a simple reputation management tool that can get you more than ten five-star Google or Yelp ratings per month. You can send your patients one-line auto-surveys in an SMS message to rate their experience with you. If they are happy, the algorithm will send them a follow-up text that will allow them to give you a five-star rating with a single tap.
This feature can help you prevent bad reviews as well. It notifies you whenever there’s an unhappy patient so that you can appease them.
Curogram is also a telemedicine solution that lets you set up a virtual clinic. You can meet your patients online to provide them with remote care. As Curogram supports your practice’s natural workflows, you won’t have trouble going online. Your doctors and staff can keep doing their job the same way they do it in a physical setting.
Our platform lets you set a virtual waiting room, where your patients will be taken once they click the appointment link. The MAs or nurses can join them there to onboard them. Once they’re ready, doctors can take over. Our platform supports multi-user visits, which means another doctor, a nurse, or an assistant can join the primary doctor during the patient visit.
All these features and more band together to form a perfect, all-encompassing healthcare solution that already boasts 5,000+ satisfied customers.
Faxing is an anomaly of our healthcare system that has persevered for far too long. Medical professionals worry that it still might be the only secure way to transfer documents to other practices. The truth is—it never was secure. Faxes would often end up reaching a wrong receiver. They are transferred in paper, making PHI an easy target for unauthorized persons.
Online faxing can eliminate the need for paper and machines, but it provides much less functionality than other Internet-based solutions.
Instead of going for HelloFax, you should choose Curogram and connect with other doctors in a secure and practical way. Here’s how our app can improve interoperability among healthcare providers:
Even though each clinic has a separate electronic system, Curogram can be a shared platform where you can collaborate and coordinate your activities to revolutionize the way patients are treated in the U.S.
Telemedicine has played one of the most important roles in healthcare development over the past two decades. With the latest advances in technology, telemedicine is getting more and more traction, turning into one of the best innovations of our generation.
The primary goal of telemedicine is to make healthcare available to everyone with Internet access. This means that telemedicine plays a huge role in the lives of those who have chronic illnesses or live in remote areas of the country. It might be strange to imagine it in this day and age, but there are millions of Americans who don’t have access to doctors.
Telemedicine in rural areas is going to make the biggest difference in how people perceive medicinal aid from a distance. More than ever before, people are now using telemedicine to their advantage.
If you’re looking to tackle telemedicine, now is the right time to hop on board. To better understand why you should start practicing telemedicine as soon as possible, you should know how it developed over the years and how it got to where it currently is.
In 1928, an illustration of a doctor having a video call consultation with their patient popped up in the Radio News magazine, titled ‘The Radio Doctor—Maybe!’ Back then, the picture was nothing but a product of imagination, and people had no idea that it would turn into reality relatively shortly after.
During the times when the radio was one of the most innovative inventions, people started talking about how helpful it would be if doctors were to host their own shows and consult their patients that way. Even though it seems like a modern invention of the 21st century, telemedicine has its roots dating back to nearly one hundred years ago.
In 1948, the official birth of telemedicine occurred when radiologic images were transferred by phone, traveling a 24-mile distance between West Chester and Philadelphia. Many people took notice of this ground-breaking progress, and a Canadian radiologist was quick to jump on board and create the first teleradiology system.
NASA, the U.S. Department of Health, and the Department of Defense supported all telemedicine projects in the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. Department of Health and the Department of Defense even sponsored certain teleradiology projects in the 1970s and 1980s.
Telemedicine has been through a lot—what was once just a thought is now a reality with the help of which healthcare became widely available.
The United States has around 60 million people who live in rural areas. As you can guess, a large portion of that population doesn’t have access to doctors. Many would have to drive for four to five hours to get in-person medical care.
Inventions such as telemedicine have a significant impact on the lives of these people. They can get diagnosed, treated, and cared for from the comfort of their homes. This is especially important for elderly residents who aren’t able to travel long distances.
Rural areas generally do have primary care practitioners, but they lack specialists. For example, if you’re having heart problems and require professional medical assistance, you might not be able to see a cardiologist in-person. If it hadn’t been for telemedicine, residents of rural areas wouldn’t have access to a primary human need—healthcare.
The existence of telemedicine in rural areas has helped, diagnosed, treated, and literally saved the lives of thousands. Even people who are against telemedicine altogether can’t argue its value.
Telehealth for rural areas comes with numerous advantages that make the lives of millions a lot easier. There are four different groups that benefit from it the most, though:
Healthcare workers will come across lots of benefits, the most important ones being:
The whole idea behind telemedicine is to aid patients who can’t receive in-person healthcare for a variety of reasons. That’s why telemedicine has countless benefits for patients:
Critical Access Hospitals can benefit from telemedicine just as much as any other abovementioned group:
Telehealth in rural areas, and anywhere else, comes with plenty of advantages that make the world a better place to live in. Just like any other invention, however, telemedicine also has a few drawbacks that hinder its implementation and usage.
The most notable disadvantages of telemedicine in the United States are of the regulatory and legal nature and include:
Other than that, rural telehealth doesn’t have any additional setbacks compared to telemedicine in general. Even though some people still advocate against remote healthcare services, it is undeniable that the advantages of rural telemedicine outweigh the disadvantages. Plenty of different case studies show how valuable rural telehealth is—it literally saves lives!
Over 76% of practitioners and hospitals within the borders of the United States are either fully or partially involved in telehealth. This is considered a huge success, despite many people saying that the progress is too slow. The vast majority of Medicaid programs offer some sort of telehealth reimbursement, which only proves how widespread the usage of telemedicine actually is.
If you want to see how private payers handle telemedicine usage and reimbursement, let’s break it down:
Medicaid reimbursement exists in nearly all states, although it’s handled differently:
One of the biggest issues with telemedicine in the United States is cross-state licensing. Each state has its own policies regarding this type of licensing:
Despite the setbacks, it is evident that telehealth is facing rapid expansion. When you take statistics into consideration, you will find that only 55% of hospitals practiced telemedicine in 2014. The number had grown rapidly in 2017 when the percentage got all the way to 76%. It is undeniable at this point that telemedicine is here to stay.
COVID-19 has affected our lives in more ways than we could have predicted. The effects were mostly negative, but when it comes to telemedicine, it prompted the vast majority of practitioners to look into providing remote healthcare services to their patients.
Unless something life-threatening happens to you, you won’t be able to see your doctor in-person because of the pandemic. People from all around the globe are being advised to turn to telemedicine to receive healthcare right now.
Now that the vast majority of people have to rely on telemedicine as a means of receiving the required medical care, it won’t be long until they start noticing all the benefits. We predict that at least 50% of people who started using telehealth during the pandemic will continue to do so in the future.
To have a successful start in telemedicine, we suggest that you try out one of the most advanced two-way texting and telemedicine platforms—Curogram. If you want to set up a virtual clinic in less than 48 hours and start admitting patients online right away, Curogram is the solution you’ve been looking for.
Although telemedicine is a straightforward term, each state has its own take on it. Telemedicine entails different things in South Carolina than it does in Louisiana, for example.
When you find the South Carolina definition of it, you will see that they define it as the use of medical information about a patient that is exchanged from one site to another through electronic communications to provide medical care to a patient in circumstances in which face-to-face contact isn’t necessary.
The definition proceeds to explain electronic communication as the usage of interactive telecommunication equipment that usually includes audio and video equipment permitting two-way, real-time interactive communication between the patient and the physician or practitioner at the referring site. According to the South Carolina definition, telemedicine includes treatment, consultation, and diagnostic services.
In Louisiana, the definition is much shorter. Louisiana law views telemedicine as a way of delivering healthcare services that utilizes information and communication technologies to enable the diagnosis, consultation, treatment, education, care management, and self-management of patients at a distance from healthcare providers.
You can see that these two definitions are nearly identical, just that one is a lot longer than the other. No matter how a state defines telemedicine, though, the point remains the same—telemedicine allows for online doctor consultations.
Curogram is a two-way texting platform that was designed specifically for medical professionals. Our platform comes with numerous features that help all practitioners have a successful start in the telehealth field.
Curogram is web-based and comes with a user-friendly interface, so your doctors and medical staff will be able to start using it right away, with no special training necessary. You don’t need to be exceptionally tech-savvy to start using our platform—if you have internet access and know how to turn on your PC, you will also know how to use Curogram.
Our platform comes with a variety of features that facilitate telemedicine:
| Curogram allows you to replicate real-life workflows | Our primary goal was to make our app as easy to get used to as possible. Curogram lets you set up multiple virtual clinics and virtual waiting rooms that mimic the in-person workflow your medical staff is used to. |
| Curogram allows you to send patient intake forms with ease | Our platform will allow you to send electronic patient intake forms either via text or secure web forms. The forms will come back to you as PDF files, so you’ll have all the info you need before the patient comes in for an online visit. |
| Curogram integrates with some of the most popular EHRs | Curogram integrates with more than 700 of the most widely-used EHRs. The data is synced between the platform and your EHR, which eliminates the need for manual or double entry and prevents the possibility of human error. |
| Curogram sends automated appointment reminders | Clinics lose tens of thousands of dollars annually due to no-shows. Curogram minimizes the chances that someone will miss their appointment. The platform lets you customize appointment reminders and sends them to your patients automatically. |
| Curogram facilitates internal communication and file sharing | With Curogram, your medical staff can exchange patients’ records and other sensitive medical information on a secure, fully HIPAA compliant platform. This facilitates internal communication, alleviates stress, and helps streamline your workflow. |
| Curogram allows for HIPAA-compliant texting | Texting is the #1 most requested feature by telemedicine patients. On average, Curogram cuts down phone volumes by 50% and spares your front desk staff the headache. |
If you’re curious to see which EHRs Curogram integrates with, these are some of the most popular ones:
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
The best part about Curogram is that it only takes only 48 hours to fully integrate, whereas most other telemedicine solutions require from 6 months to a year to implement. With Curogram, you can have your virtual clinic up and running over the course of a single weekend!
If you want to try Curogram out, you don’t need to spend any money—we offer a
you can sign up for today! We guarantee that, after the two week period, you won't be able to imagine your practice without Curogram.
","status":"publish","position":10},{"id":"5fe3a566fdb40273b9f1fd79","slug":"is-texting-hipaa-compliant","title":"Is Texting HIPAA Compliant?","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fb400962514f90fb33a813d","title":"HIPAA"},"content":"Texting is a service included in all phone packages, no matter which provider you use. It is one of the essential communication methods, second only to phone calls. Everybody knows how to use it, regardless of their age and love of new technology.
This universal application of the service has got many health professionals wondering whether or not texting is an acceptable way to communicate with their patients. The short answer is no—it usually isn't. There are some exceptions, but they are so rare that it raises the question of whether it's even practical to consider using texting as a way to communicate with patients. If the short answer doesn't work for you, here's an explanation—and a suggestion for a better alternative.
While HIPAA doesn't strictly forbid using SMS to send and receive confidential information, it does specify all the conditions which should be met for a communication system to be HIPAA compliant. The most relevant requirements are the following:
A standard SMS system typically doesn't comply with any of these requirements and is not HIPAA compliant. To make matters even worse, SMS is particularly vulnerable. There is no way to delete the PHI remotely when phones get lost or stolen, and the opportunities for mishandling the information are exceptionally high as anyone can edit a message before forwarding it to the final recipient.
Traditional texting is neither HIPAA compliant nor safe, and the smart thing to do is avoid it at all costs. In some cases, though, it is allowed to exchange PHI via this service. Some of the circumstances in which sending and receiving information through texting are:
In these circumstances, you can use texting as a means to communicate in a health organization. However, true HIPAA compliant texting solutions are much better both for staff and the patients..
Because of the Covid-19 national emergency, the OCR has decided to issue a regulation that allows non-HIPAA compliant communication in healthcare. They did this to keep healthcare available for those who can't or won't put their health in jeopardy by spending time in waiting rooms or going out at all. The reduced data security measures will be on for as long as the national emergency lasts.
Just the fact that you can use it, though, doesn't mean it's a good idea. HIPAA is there for a reason. It helps you protect sensitive information about your patients, and you shouldn't jump at the chance to expose it.
There are more practical concerns as well. You would spend time and energy implementing a solution that is severely lacking in features that could make your staff’s lives easier. You wouldn't even be able to use the said solution once the emergency ends, so, aside from minuscule gain you might get, your efforts would be almost entirely wasted. Texting in healthcare is not worth the hassle.
There is a much better way to go remote—Curogram. Our platform is adapted specially for healthcare, so it provides you with plenty of useful features that you can't get from conventional communication systems. It fully complies with the HIPAA rules for data protection.
Curogram is exceptionally easy to use, and it can integrate with your EHR in less than 48 hours. It'll assist your doctors and staff, and make your transition into telemedicine a breeze.
Using any tools that are not adapted for healthcare can lead to certain issues. Here are five problems you're bound to face if you try to use texting for telemedicine.
Curogram does all that and more.
Texting | Curogram | |
Mimic in-person workflows | No | Yes |
Virtual waiting room | No | Yes |
Allows secure document transfer | No | Yes |
EHR integration | No | Yes |
The amount of work that can be done through texting is nearly non-existent. You can schedule an appointment, reschedule if needed, and do short consultations. Even that is painfully complicated.
Your doctors would need to waste a lot of time doing administrative work, collecting the data they need, and prepping the patient for an appointment. Nurses would need to take care of the schedule, which means that they'd be stuck dealing with patients before and after they show up for an appointment.
If your nurses do scheduling, rescheduling, canceling, and so on, and your doctors do the administration and prep the patients for the appointments, how many people can they see in a workday?
This kind of system will waste a lot of time, and more often than not, annoy and stress out your staff. With Curogram, you can avoid the whole shenanigan. The appointments are scheduled, rescheduled, and recorded automatically, giving your nurses, assistants, and doctors time to do their job, instead of tedious, menial tasks. Curogram makes everything run smoothly and mimics the in-person appointment workflow. It will go a long way in keeping your staff—and your patients—happy as clams.
Texting doesn't provide any way for the doctor to know who's waiting to be seen next. They would have to let the nurse know every time they're done with an appointment and wait for the nurse to tell them if anybody is waiting at the moment.
This can take up quite a bit of time, and it can lead to additional problems. If the nurse doesn't see the message immediately, is busy doing something else, or if there is a glitch in the system, the patient can be left waiting for a long time. If it happens a lot, it can severely damage your business because customer satisfaction will drop.
Curogram offers a virtual waiting room, which makes everything much more manageable. The nurse can check in patient after patient, send them into the waiting room, where the doctor will spot them as soon as they finish their appointment with the previous patient. Everybody does their job, and everything goes smoothly.
Before the appointment even takes place, the patient needs to send the intake form that they've previously filled out. During the meeting, the doctor might require some additional files. After it, nurses need to provide the post-visit forms, including prescriptions for medicines, the recommendation for exercise, or, in some cases, even notes from the appointment.
This is all incredibly difficult to do over an SMS if you care about HIPAA compliance.
Curogram is 100% HIPAA compliant, and everything you send or receive is protected. You can take the documentation straight from the EHR, which makes everything much more secure since it negates the need to keep them in nurses' computers.
There is absolutely no possible way for texting to integrate with EHR in any way, shape, or form. It can't be done.
Curogram not only integrates with EHR but does so in 48 hours or less. It integrates with over 400 EHRs, which saves a lot of time on data entry, which would otherwise have to be done manually.
Here are just a few of EHRs that we can integrate with.
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
If you're not convinced that you should make an effort when it comes to your business' telemedicine options, or you believe that it's enough to use one of the approved non-HIPAA compliant methods during the Covid-19 emergency, consider the following:
Despite its undeniable usefulness, the transition to telemedicine might not go as smoothly as you'd like. There are bound to be certain difficulties, and the essential ones are the following:
Your patients might doubt the feasibility of the new system or, more importantly, be doubtful about the confidentiality aspect of your business. Opting to do business through texting could make matters much worse. It can make you seem unprofessional and unwilling to adapt to the situation at the expense of your patients.
If you choose Curogram instead, you can keep all the simplicity of communication through the SMS, while still conducting your arrangements in an utterly professional manner. Your patients will get used to your new system and start trusting it in no time.
To work efficiently, doctors need support from nurses and other staff. They shouldn't have to deal with the organization, technical problems, and so on. Their job should be patient care and patient care only.
If you opt for Curogram, your doctors won't need to think about anything but the patient at hand. Your support staff will do their job, the doctors will do theirs, and they'll be able to work in synch while communicating with each other—not just the patients—to get the work done with the same efficiency as they would if the meeting was in person.
While texting is an option that beats many others—your patients don't need to install new apps, or learn to deal with complicated technology—it has several drawbacks that affect your staff more than any other part of your business.
Instead of prepping the patients for the appointment—which is what your team should be doing—they'll have to deal with administrative work. Scheduling and rescheduling, reminding the patients of the appointments, and similar tasks will take insane amounts of time and effort that your staff could use much more productively.
Curogram does all of that automatically. It keeps everything flowing neatly, and gives your staff the chance to do their work, instead of getting stuck in the administration hell. This way, everything runs smoothly, so your entire personnel can do their job promptly and efficiently.
The documentation that reaches your organization should be kept secure, which is a difficult task if you don't have proper tools. Texting does nothing to help you— everything sent via SMS stays recorded for the provider to access at any time, and that's not even the only issue.
The documents that you receive need to be organized. Without the appropriate programs, your staff will need to do it manually. That takes a lot of the time that they could spend working with patients. You'll need to come up with a system that works, so you don't lose files, and can access them at a moment's notice. Your staff can make mistakes, and harm your business through accidental misuse of your patients' data.
You can avoid all of these issues if you use Curogram. It allows you to receive and send data securely. It organizes the files according to the individual meetings, so there is no chance of any files being lost or misplaced. It allows you to take screenshots during the appointment, and ties those to the meeting documentation as well, in case you ever need them for insurance or any other reasons.
When transitioning into telemedicine, you need all the convenience you can get. With Curogram, you can make the transition smooth and easy, so you won't lose your patients or harm your business. The three most important benefits of this option are:
Making sure the work environment stays productive, manageable, and as familiar as possible will make your employees much more comfortable than an impractical transition into a less effective, more frustrating system. You can help your staff avoid stress and keep working without significant interruptions. Curogram provides the option of setting up a group chat for them, so they can communicate easily among themselves about any work-related issues and still keep everything secure.
With a reliable system for telemedicine, you can reach more patients. Sometimes people can't make it to the scheduled appointment because of personal issues—they couldn't find a babysitter, or they have to work from home. Sometimes they have to comply with the government-imposed movement restrictions during national emergencies. They can still make a virtual visit to their doctor if the need arises, so they don't have to make do without medical attention.
Using inefficient online systems will likely lead to bad reviews, and Curogram prevents that. Keeping your patients happy will bring you positive word-of-mouth, which will improve your business in the long run. Being able to reach more patients is bound to increase your profits as well. You will be losing much less money on no-shows, and you might be able to increase the patient volume once your staff gets used to the system, as they'll be more productive. Being able to work with more patients during a workday translates into more money for your business.
Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, telemedicine has experienced rapid growth in the United States. Many practitioners are looking to find their spot in the field of virtual medicine, as the grounds for it have never been more fertile.
Even before the global emergency, telemedicine was gaining traction. Plenty of people all over the U.S. who had limited access to in-person medical care had jumped on board with the innovation that changed the world forever.
The significance of telemedicine is ever-growing, as it provides aid for those who have no other option in terms of diagnosis, treatment, and overall medical care. Although its value is undeniable, the U.S. legislation hasn’t fully defined the rules that are necessary for further evolution.
To understand where this discrepancy between the legislation around telemedicine and its practical application comes from, we need to go over telemedicine definitions across multiple states in search of inconsistencies. Considering that states can’t even agree on a single definition of telemedicine, it isn’t surprising to see how different rules apply to each state.
The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a concise definition of telemedicine. It describes telemedicine as the use of telecommunications and electronic information technologies that aims to promote long-distance health care, public health administration, and patient and professional health-related education.
The telecommunication technologies include the Internet, streaming media, store-and-forward imaging, videoconferencing, and terrestrial and wireless communications.
Even though this can serve as the official definition of telemedicine in the U.S., certain states disagree with parts of it. That’s why they have their own interpretations.
California, for example, defines telemedicine as a way of delivering public health and healthcare services when the recipient is found at an originating site and the practitioner at a distant site.
Mississippi has its own twist on the definition as well, stating that telemedicine is supposed to deliver healthcare through consultation, diagnosis, and treatment using interactive video, audio, or other telecommunication technologies. In this state, telemedicine needs to occur in real-time, meaning that healthcare services provided via email, facsimile transmission, or phone are not allowed.
Texas has the simplest definition of telemedicine by far, defining it as remote medical services provided by a practitioner licensed in Texas to a patient.
As you can see, all of these definitions have huge overlappings. Some states define telemedicine in detail, whereas others offer vague descriptions. We have to agree that having a longer, more precise definition helps both recipients and healthcare workers know what they can or cannot do.
If you wish to practice telemedicine in the United States, you should know that requirements vary greatly. Each state has its own set of rules and guidelines.
Some of the most common requirements for those who want to tackle telemedicine and apply for a telemedicine license in states that require them to get one are:
In the United States, up to 76% of healthcare workers and hospitals are either partially or fully involved in telemedicine. This information only proves how much traction telemedicine has got over the years, and we believe that its growth won’t come to a halt any time soon.
To get a better idea of how far we’ve come in the field, let’s take a look at how Medicaid reimbursements are handled:
One of the biggest concerns of telemedicine in the United States is cross-state licensing. Here’s a quick overview of what providing telemedicine services across state borders looks like:
The vast majority of the states require healthcare workers to have or obtain a license in the state their patients reside in before being able to treat them. This makes things somewhat complicated if you intend to provide remote healthcare services to patients outside of your state borders.
Knowing how challenging this rule is, Interstate Licensure Compact was drafted as a potential solution to the problem. The Compact was first introduced as an idea back in 2013 when the licensure issue started being talked about more frequently. Four years later, it became fully operational, and one by one, states joined it to facilitate the application of telemedicine cross-country.
Twenty-seven states are now part of the Compact. The initial goal was to make cross-state licensing easier, which it did, but that doesn’t mean that everything is solved now. Bear in mind that each state has its medical board that reviews license applications, which makes the whole process highly dependent on the board itself.
You need to do some diligent research on how long your state’s medical board may take to review your application. You can’t rely on information provided by other states because the process can take anywhere between a couple of weeks and a few months. Another thing you should keep in mind that licensing fees also differ from state to state.
If you want to obtain a cross-state telemedicine license, you need to meet specific requirements. The team behind ILC says that around 80% of applicants manage to fulfill the requirements, which is good news for practitioners who are looking into providing remote healthcare services to patients across the country.
To join the Interstate Licensure Compact successfully and obtain a cross-state telemedicine license, you must meet the following requirements:
Keep in mind that the application fee is $700, non-refundable, regardless of whether or not you obtain the license.
Telemedicine comes with numerous benefits that help people all over the world every single day. Just like anything else, though, it has its downsides.
Some of the main concerns related to telemedicine are legal and regulatory in nature:
It’s clear that you need to have equipment that can support telemedicine purposes if you want to practice virtual healthcare. Apart from that, security concerns, and licensure troubles, telemedicine doesn’t have that many disadvantages. It serves as a tool that can literally save the lives of those who live in remote and underserved areas. Day by day, telemedicine keeps proving that modern inventions aren’t nearly as bad as they’re portrayed to be.
Telemedicine provides various perks for everyone involved. There are three main groups of people who benefit from telemedicine:
Among other things, telemedicine benefits Critical Access Hospitals significantly. Some of the main advantages are:
Telemedicine was created to aid those in need. Patients who rely on virtual healthcare enjoy many advantages, the most impactful being:
Healthcare workers who are involved in telemedicine can tell you all about the following perks:
Created for medical professionals specifically, Curogram is a two-way texting and telemedicine platform that facilitates communication between healthcare workers and patients and enables you to treat them remotely. It has numerous features that make it stand out in the world of telemedicine.
Our goal was to make Curogram as easy to use as possible—anyone who has Internet access can use it effortlessly.
If you’re curious about our platform’s features, check these out:
| Curogram allows you to replicate real-life workflows | We’ve introduced a feature that lets you set up multiple virtual clinics and virtual waiting rooms because we wanted our platform to be as simple to get used to as possible. Given that Curogram can mimic the in-person workflow your staff is used to, there is no adjustment period—you’ll be able to start admitting patients right away! |
| Curogram allows you to send electronic patient intake forms with ease | Our platform will allow you to send electronic patient intake forms either via text or secure web forms. The forms will come back to you as PDF files as soon as the patients submit them, and the data is automatically entered into your EHR! |
| Curogram has some of the most advanced appointment reminders on the market | Clinics lose tens of thousands of dollars annually due to missed appointments. Curogram reduces no-shows by 75% through smart, automated appointment reminders. |
| Curogram facilitates internal communication and file sharing | With Curogram, your medical staff can exchange patients’ records and other sensitive medical information on a secure, fully HIPAA compliant platform. This facilitates internal communication, alleviates stress, and helps streamline your workflow. |
| Curogram allows for HIPAA-compliant texting | Texting is by far the most requested feature by telemedicine patients. Curogram cuts down phone volumes by 50% and lets your patients schedule and reschedule appointments and send inquiries via SMS. |
Curogram is super easy to integrate—it takes only 48 hours to get everything up and running, without the need to hire an IT expert.
Curogram also integrates with over 700 EHRs. All the relevant information is synced between the platform and your EHR, which removes the need for manual or double entry and eliminates the possibility of human error from the equation.
Some of the most popular EHRs Curogram integrates with are:
Curogram EHR integrations | |
eClinicalWorks | Athena |
Epic | Cerner |
DrChrono | NextGen |
Practice Fusion | CareCloud |
Kareo | OfficeAlly |
Curogram is the best telemedicine solution on the market, but we don’t expect you to take our word for it. Start a 14-day free trial, test out all the features of our platform, and see firsthand why over 5,000 medical professionals choose Curogram for their telemedicine practice!
","status":"publish","position":11},{"id":"5fea4a9cfdb4022a62f1fd8b","slug":"telehealth-vs-telemedicine","title":"Telehealth vs Telemedicine","type":"public","category":{"id":"5fdd02e75dfe8c43efac3d77","title":"Telemedicine"},"content":"Telehealth and telemedicine are often used as synonyms. They both describe a slew of healthcare services that are delivered remotely. Websites, healthcare providers, and even some healthcare organizations use them interchangeably, without paying any mind to the subtle differences between the two terms.
From a patient’s perspective, it matters little how anyone chooses to refer to the remote medical care they receive. The only thing patients have to worry about is whether or not those services are covered by their insurance plans.
When it comes to healthcare providers, the story is a bit different. The main reason why medical professionals need to be able to make the distinction between telehealth and telemedicine are the different laws, rules, and regulations that apply to remote healthcare in their state. In some cases, all the laws and regulations apply to both terms, while in some states, specific limitations may apply to telemedicine and telehealth separately.
To help clear the confusion and provide you with a better understanding of the two terms, we have to closely examine various definitions of telemedicine and telehealth from several health organizations and state laws.
Telemedicine has a rich history, and the idea of “healing at a distance” dates back to the 19th century. Although the first use of the term “telemedicine” is difficult to pinpoint, an 1879 article in the Lancet discussed using the telephone to reduce unnecessary office visits. The article describes how a physician managed to determine if a baby had croup by listening to its cough through a telephone.
Providing medical care to patients at a distance became a reality as technology advanced. Telemedicine took its modern form in the 1950s and 1960s when healthcare providers started utilizing the technology to transmit images, video, and medical data.
As the practical uses of technology to transmit medical information and treat patients at a distance evolved, various healthcare professionals and organizations adopted different definitions of telemedicine.
A 2007 study collected 104 different peer-reviewed definitions of telemedicine. The study reinforced the view that it’s difficult to provide a clear-cut definition of the term but simultaneously highlighted several aspects that the majority of the 104 views of telemedicine had in common.
The researchers found that these four areas were often referenced in nearly all 104 peer-reviewed definitions:
The results of the 2007 study largely influenced the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of telemedicine, resulting in the WHO settling on a rather broad definition of the term.
In their 2009 report—Telemedicine: Opportunities and Developments in Member States—the World Health Organization defines telemedicine as the delivery of healthcare services using telecommunication and information technology and highlights distance as the key factor.
WHO states that the main purpose of telemedicine is the advancing of the health of individuals and their communities. According to WHO, telemedicine revolves around exchanging valid medical information through various communication channels, which enables:
One interesting thing to note is that the World Health Organization does acknowledge the presence of telehealth. The organization states that “some distinguish telehealth from telemedicine,” but still opts to use the two terms interchangeably.
All in all, WHO’s definition of telemedicine doesn’t tell us much, if anything. Anyone encountering the term “telemedicine” for the first time would’ve guessed that it refers to healthcare services (medicine) that are provided remotely (tele).
If we want to understand telemedicine and telehealth better, as well as uncover any differences between the two terms, who better to turn to than the American Telemedicine Association (ATA)?
Although ATA also uses the two terms to refer to any healthcare services delivered remotely, it does acknowledge that telehealth is a broader term that encompasses a range of non-clinical services. This gives us the first hint we need to solve this conundrum.
The Association also provides a formal definition of telemedicine, stating that the term involves exchanging medical information from one site to another, using electronic communications, for the purpose of improving a patient’s clinical health status.
ATA also recognizes that the advancement of technology is largely impacting telemedicine and adds that telemedicine today includes a variety of applications and services, such as:
There are two things to pay attention to in the American Telemedicine Association’s definition of telemedicine.
Firstly, it doesn’t explicitly state that the services need to be delivered to a patient. What this means is that ATA recognizes that, in order to provide treatment to patients, healthcare providers may need to rely on telecommunications technology to share information with other medical professionals or consult specialists.
Secondly, it states that the main goal of telemedicine is to improve the patient’s clinical status. This implies that telemedicine includes the examination, diagnosis, and treatment of the patient.
With ATA’s definition in mind, the main difference between telemedicine and telehealth would be the fact that telehealth encompasses a variety of other non-clinical activities, such as continuing medical education for providers.
ATA also highlights the fact that telemedicine is not a separate medical specialty. Rather, telemedicine represents an effort by a healthcare organization to implement modern telecommunications and information technology to facilitate the clinical care of patients.
Keep in mind that the Association uses telemedicine and telehealth interchangeably. In other words, both telemedicine and telehealth under ATA’s definition include not only video conferencing between a patient and a healthcare provider but also:
Although the American Telemedicine Association does point us in the right direction when it comes to finding the differences between telemedicine and telehealth, we have to dig a bit deeper.
In 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided clarification of the two terms and formally expressed the differences between telemedicine and telehealth.
HHS defines telemedicine as the utilization of telecommunications technologies and electronic information to support:
This definition alone doesn’t tell us much regarding the differences between telemedicine and telehealth, but the Department did address the issue. In a post on HealthIT.gov, HHS explicitly stated that telehealth is different from telemedicine.
Their view of the matter is such that telehealth encompasses a wider range of remote healthcare services than telemedicine. With that in mind, HHS emphasizes the fact that telemedicine pertains to remote clinical services. Telehealth is a more encompassing term and may refer to a variety of non-clinical remote services, like provider training and continuing medical education.
With this post, HHS revised its earlier definition of telemedicine and put the emphasis on distinguishing clinical and non-clinical services.
That said, the situation still seems convoluted. We need to take a look at different state laws, regulations, and policies in order to understand the practical implications of the difference between the two terms.
The fact of the matter is that subtle differences in definitions of telemedicine and telehealth by various organizations don’t actually matter. What healthcare providers looking to embrace telemedicine need to pay attention to are the state laws and other applicable rules, regulations, and policies that apply to remote healthcare services in their state.
Lawmakers in different states have different takes on telemedicine and telehealth. While some states don’t recognize any differences between the two terms, others have separate policies for telemedicine and telehealth and even specify the type of equipment that can be used to deliver remote healthcare services.
Let’s go over telemedicine and telehealth definitions in a few states quickly to show you exactly what you need to pay attention to if you’re planning on providing remote healthcare services to your patients.
In Texas state law, telemedicine and telehealth are two clearly separate terms. The statutory definition of telemedicine in the State of Texas states that physicians licensed to practice medicine in the state may provide healthcare services to patients at a distance by leveraging telecommunications or information technologies.
What this means is that telemedicine in Texas only comes down to remote healthcare services provided by physicians or healthcare professionals under their delegations, where said services include clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.
Telehealth in Texas is defined as remote medical services other than telemedicine, delivered by a healthcare professional licensed in the state. This distinction has several practical implications, the most notable one being that only Texas-licensed physicians can issue online prescriptions to patients in the state.
Read more about telemedicine in Texas.
The State of Michigan not only fails to recognize the difference between the two terms, but it replaced telemedicine entirely with telehealth as a more comprehensive term.
The initial definition of telemedicine highlighted the connection between a physician and a patient at different locations. Keeping pace with the technological advancements, Michigan’s lawmakers amended the definition to include patient and provider health education, public health, and health administration.
In Michigan, telemedicine is just one area of telehealth, which pertains to remote clinical care. Unlike Texas, Michigan allows various medical professionals apart from physicians to issue online prescriptions as a result of a telemedicine encounter:
Read more about telehealth and telemedicine in Michigan.
Although Georgia state law views telemedicine and telehealth as similar terms, it does acknowledge the subtle differences between the two. The State of Georgia distinguishes the two terms by looking at the intent behind the remote healthcare services and the way in which they are delivered.
Telemedicine in Georgia refers to clinical services delivered through two-way audio and video communication. The important thing to note here is that Georgia state law excludes phone consultations and facsimile transmission from the definition of telemedicine. What this means is that delivering remote healthcare services to patients via phone isn’t billable.
Several other states impose similar limitations to telemedicine. The reason for this is that telemedicine services need to be held to the same standard of care as medical services that are delivered in-person. To that end, Georgia and several other states require providers to establish a real-time, two-way connection with the patient in order to arrive at an accurate diagnosis.
Telehealth in Georgia refers to the use of electronic and telecommunication, including phone consultations and remote patient monitoring, to facilitate clinical healthcare, health consultations, health-related education, and health administration.
The key thing to note here is that telemedicine requires a live audio-video communication channel and implies diagnosis and treatment, while telehealth pertains to a variety of remote healthcare services that aid in-person medical care.
Read more about telemedicine and telehealth in Georgia.
If you want to start practicing telemedicine and telehealth, we strongly advise you to familiarize yourself with all applicable laws in your state. Here’s a table with quick links to our comprehensive articles that provide a detailed overview of telemedicine and telehealth laws by state:
Telemedicine by State in the US | |||
| Alabama | Indiana | Nebraska | South Carolina |
| Alaska | Iowa | Nevada | South Dakota |
| Arizona | Kansas | New Hampshire | Tennessee |
| Arkansas | Kentucky | New Jersey | Texas |
| California | Louisiana | New Mexico | Utah |
| Colorado | Maine | New York | Vermont |
| Connecticut | Maryland | North Carolina | Virginia |
| Delaware | Massachusetts | North Dakota | Washington |
| Florida | Michigan | Ohio | West Virginia |
| Georgia | Minnesota | Oklahoma | Wisconsin |
| Hawaii | Mississippi | Oregon | Wyoming |
| Idaho | Missouri | Pennsylvania | |
| Illinois | Montana | Rhode Island |
If there isn’t a link for your state, please note that we will cover telemedicine and telehealth laws by state for all 50 states, so make sure to check out our blog regularly! You can also read our article on telemedicine reimbursement by state to see what types of remote healthcare services are eligible for reimbursement in your state.
To surmise, it’s difficult to draw the line between telemedicine and telehealth, as different organizations and states have varying outlooks on the two terms.
In general, telemedicine is often limited to remote clinical services—examination, diagnosis, and treatment of patients at a distance, for a variety of medical conditions. Telehealth is often viewed as a broader term that includes a wide range of non-clinical services that promote health education of both providers and patients, facilitate health administration, and otherwise aid in-person medical care.
That said, the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) points out that, in recent years, telehealth has been used more often, given the fact that the term takes into consideration new capabilities of providing remote healthcare, made possible by technological advancements.
CCHP stresses the fact that telehealth has a broader scope and includes various other medical fields, aside from clinical care. This expands remote healthcare services to other areas, such as:
The Center also defines the four telehealth modalities:
CCHP defines live video conferencing as the use of audio-visual telecommunications technologies to connect a healthcare provider with a patient, caregiver, or another medical professional. The accent is on the real-time connection and the ability to provide the same level of services that the patient would receive in an in-person setting.
Store-and-forward technology refers to the storage and transmission of medical information, such as lab results, digital images, videos, and other medical documents. The technology is primarily used to share information between two healthcare providers, or a healthcare provider and a medical facility, to aid in patient treatment—whether said treatment is provided remotely or in-person.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) refers to leveraging digital technologies and wireless devices to collect and transmit medical data from the patient’s location to the provider’s office or a medical facility. This gives healthcare providers valuable insights into their patients’ conditions, allowing them to adjust treatment when necessary.
Mobile health refers to the provisioning of healthcare services and the monitoring of personal health data through a variety of health applications on mobile devices.
Regardless of how different organizations define them or what subtle differences there may be in your state’s telemedicine and telehealth laws—Curogram has you covered on all fronts!
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| Easy EHR integration | Curogram integrates with over 700 EHRs, eliminating the need for manual or double entry. Removing tedious administrative tasks allows your doctors to admit more patients daily, increasing the revenue of your practice. |
| Automated reminders | Curogram allows you to create automated appointment reminders to make sure patients don’t miss their appointments. This feature helps reduce no-shows by an incredible 75%! |
| Workflows you’re accustomed to | Curogram makes the transition to telemedicine easy by mimicking your in-person workflows. Our advanced waiting room management tools allow your staff to quickly and easily check-in and check-out patients. Doctors don’t have to worry about onboarding and can treat up to 40 patients daily! |
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