ATA releases SDOH toolkit to scale community telehealth delivery
New tools from the American Telemedicine Association can help assess a community’s digital infrastructure and estimate the costs of telehealth-based clinical or social interventions to show how virtual care can impact health care disparities.
WHY IT MATTERS
ATA announced Monday that it is releasing new tools developed under the leadership of the Advisory Group on Using Telehealth to Eliminate Disparities and Inequities to help decision makers target and fund interventions that address the economic burden of inactivity and improve the health of communities .
The Inequalities Advisory Group Toolkit includes measures, calculators, and other tools that use telehealth to address social determinants of health and eliminate health care disparities.
The advisory group consists of national healthcare leaders and is led by co-chairs Kristi Henderson, DNP, Yasmine Winkler and Dr. Ron Wyatt, with David Smith, CEO of Third Horizon Strategies, facilitating, explains Ann Mond Johnson, CEO of the ATA.
“We launched the advisory group in 2021 to address the unique ways in which telehealth can be used to eliminate health disparities in the US,” she said in a statement.
Johnson noted that the tools go beyond a traditional return on investment framework to achieve economic and social values.
“These new tools build on a framework and advance our efforts to ensure everyone has access to the care they need, recognizing that telehealth is a critical component and modality for accessing care,” said Kristi Henderson, DNP, CEO of Confluent Health, Chairman of the ATA Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the Advisory Group.
The Disparities Advisory Group Toolkit includes:
- A digital infrastructure disparity score and map using a newly constructed metric designed to score a community’s digital infrastructure on a scale of 1-100.
- A calculation tool with economic and social value can help identify the costs of telehealth-based clinical or social interventions and estimate the value of an intervention – including the capital and operating costs of telehealth technology platforms and reliable broadband connectivity – to the benefit of payers, providers , government and companies.
- A resource toolkit with a new roadmap.
The release of this “groundbreaking work” is timed to commemorate the third annual Telehealth Awareness Week.
ATA said this year’s event will highlight the role of telehealth in an omnichannel healthcare delivery system – expanding access to quality care and addressing the challenges healthcare providers face.
THE BIG TREND
The passage of the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 in June makes permanent telehealth flexibilities first introduced in the CARES Act of 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new law demonstrates the federal government’s commitment to healthcare equity and addressing SDOH, said Kamala Green, social enablers for health programs program manager at National Government Services.
“It is essential to tailor solutions that fit the population of people who do not have the quality resources they deserve,” she said Healthcare IT news last month.
“Expanding and establishing permanent access to telehealth services is a great first step in providing these solutions.”
Earlier this year, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology released an SDOH toolkit that can serve as a data standard source for collecting and using social determinants data for community groups and health care providers working to achieve health equity.
ON THE RECORD
“The work of our advisory group focuses on creating the infrastructure and tools that will allow the industry – including healthcare providers, payers and policymakers – to appropriately assess the required components in eliminating disparities, and understand where virtual care services can help address improve healthcare. of our citizens and the investment needed,” Johnson said in the statement.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.