Events

Organizer: NRTRC

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Region 10 Office of Regional Operations presents Region 10 “State of the Region”, a panel to provide a region-wide perspective on telehealth activities and resources. Telehealth is especially critical in remote areas to extend the delivery of health care services, health education, and specialty care. As providers and provider organizations expand and enhance their capabilities, telehealth effectively works to improve care coordination and access to health care services. As telehealth tools increase, lessons learned and promising practices shared by expert users become necessary to ensure regional and national fidelity.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Hosted and taught by the expert staff of the National Telehealth Technology and Assessment Resource Center (TTAC), this is usually delivered as a hands-on experience. Given our current circumstances, TTAC has developed a virtual workshop that offers a chance to experience telemedicine equipment and peripherals used in a clinical setting and also devices used indirect to consumer applications. This will also be an opportunity to ask questions of TTAC staff.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Taught by Bonnie Britton, MSN, RN, ATAF, Board Advisor and Consultant for the Mid Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center (MATRC) and Executive Director, Reconnect 4 Health. Bonnie will share her extensive experience and knowledge to provide a comprehensive "how-to" on remote patient monitoring (RPM). Learn how to stand up a Remote Patient Monitoring Program quickly and efficiently. Bonnie Britton is one of the nation's leading experts in RPM. In this two hour workshop she will review the policies and regulations for RPM, the importance of creating a sustainable model and practical steps for setting up a program.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Gain practical knowledge with this comprehensive overview. For those new to telehealth or looking for a refresher, this workshop will provide information on how to create and/or grow telehealth programs. Tools, tips and lessons learned will be incorporated into a discussion of the various components of setting up a telemedicine program.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Meeting behavioral health needs can be a challenge for rural and underserved communities. Learn how to find, vet and work with telebehavioral health providers. Ample time during this session will be dedicated for Q&A for participants. Speaker Jonathan Neufeld will have presented earlier in the day on a National Consortium of TRCs webinar so will be available to discuss questions and issues arising from both presentations and the interests of the audience.

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Organizer: NRTRC

The highest rates of suicide occur in rural and remote areas where individuals have limited access to specialized mental health services.1 Despite advancements in expanding access to evidence-based mental health treatments via video based technology (e.g., Clinical Video Telehealth; CVT), there is limited work specific to addressing suicide risk. Most CVT studies exclude individuals experiencing suicidal ideation or recent suicidal behavior.Considering the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a national leader in CVT efforts, we explored differences in suicidal behavior among Veterans receiving in-person or CVT mental health treatment. Suicide risk was indexed by a Suicide Behavior Report (SBR) at three time points: 6 months prior to first CVT appointment in 2017, during treatment in 2017, and 12 months following first appointment in 2017). Fisher’s exact test and a discrete time survival analysis via the Kaplan-Meier method were used to determine whether suicide risk differed as a function of telehealth status. Overall, results indicated that suicide risk does not differ among Veterans receiving CVT versus in-person treatment. As such, clinical providers should be ready to attend to and provide evidence-based treatments for suicide risk via CVT. Clinical recommendations and best practices for suicide prevention via CVT will be presented.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Virtual Conference sponsors and exhibitors will provide attendees with an opportunity to learn abut their products and ask questions. Please support our sponsors and learn something at the same time!

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Organizer: NRTRC

Telemedicine in rural healthcare communities have significantly improved the options in how patients are cared for and it is shown numerous times through studies that patients have better outcomes when they are cared for in their own communities. By utilizing telemedicine in the wound care setting, patients who would usually travel upwards of 5 hours from Billings, Montana or 350-400 miles, can be seen in the comfort of their providers office to obtain the care they need to heal from chronic wounds. The program has developed relationships to serve both Native and non-Native patients. In this presentation, the attendees will have the opportunity to be presented with a visual timeline and experience what it takes to develop and deliver a telemedicine program to rural and frontier health communities.

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Organizer: NRTRC

MyCare Family (Merrimack Valley Accountable Care Organization (MVACO)) a partnership between Greater Lawrence Family HealthCenter (GLFHC) and Lawrence General Hospital (LGH) in Lawrence Massachusetts, adverse high poverty community, with 76% of the population Hispanic.Socioeconomic factors and a recent community disaster contribute to high disease burden and mortality rates including Diabetes, Behavioral Health, Asthma and Opioid Addiction. Recognizing the critical needs of the population, MyCare Family sought to develop a collaborative partner telehealth services strategy. The plan would address the critical disease states of clients,Emergency Department overuse, transient behaviors, language barriers,homelessness and lack of transportation. Through stakeholder interviews and studies, current service needs, existing services community needs, strategic priorities and ROI were analyzed with a determination that clients lacked access to care in major areas including: Dermatology, Behavioral Health and Language Services. From an ACO perspective dependence is on providing services through partners. The project results included a clear picture and path defining telehealth services for high quality sustainable access to care and positive clinical and financial return on investment. The results demonstrate how an ACO can propel telehealth as a successful collaborative partner with providers and community services in a challenging patient environment.

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Organizer: NRTRC

On-demand, direct-to-consumer video (or virtual) visits represent one of the largest outpatient telehealth services. Due to the absence of an in-person physical examination, some question the effectiveness,efficiency and value of virtual care visits to both systems and to patients. To address these questions, we conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional review of Intermountain Healthcare’s virtual care program, Connect Care. This presentation will share the results of the study plus some of our own analysis on patient experience and cost savings. Using SelectHealth claims data, we reviewed the total cost of care across urgent, primary, emergency and virtual care and found no differences in follow-up rates between virtual and urgent care and no differences in antibiotic use between virtual and urgent or primary care. Virtual care was significantly lower than all other care settings in utilization of laboratory and imaging services, index visit cost and total costs over 21 days. This study affirmed lower cost for virtual care without an associated increase in overall follow-up rates of antibiotic use when compared with urgent or primary care.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Learn about potential grant programs and funding sources that are aimed at technology opportunities, how to apply for those grants and what to do once you receive the grant. We will learn share best practices when approaching grant funding, how to plan ahead for a grant application and how to best leverage matching funds. We will review the “How-Tos” of alternative funding, relevant grant programs and tips and tricks to securing grant funding.Please come ready to discuss and ask questions.

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Organizer: NRTRC

When supported with AI and machine learning technology, teletherapy allows providers to design and deliver highly-tailored treatment plans. Today’s modern telehealth platforms go far beyond simple tasks like session logging,patient record keeping, scheduling, and video conferencing. Computer vision technology can track a patient’s micro expressions in real-time, while natural language processing (NLP) can analyze and index session dialogue. All of this data is stored and analyzed in detail to help therapists personalize patient sessions and continuously develop a predictive treatment plan, resulting in better patient experiences with higher treatment efficacy and shorter duration. Dr.Shelli Dry, OTD and Director of Clinical Operation at Enable My Child, will share insights on how providers can take a human-centric approach when integrating emerging technologies into the patient experience. Referencing her work, Dr. Dry’s presentation will provide a road map for creating engaging,personalized, and data-driven experiences for patients through:

• An exploration of how modern teletherapy can be deployed at the patient-level across various points of treatment
• Insights into how AI, machine learning, and other forms of emerging technology can be leveraged to customize the patient experience.
• Case studies demonstrating how these strategies have transformed patient outcomes in the real world.

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Organizer: NRTRC

Telehealth may be in the unique position to implement innovative, user-friendly approaches for combating social isolation and cognitive decline. Our team has been conducting randomized controlled clinical trials over the past 10 years, examining the impact of social interaction on brain health. Currently, our I-CONECT (Internet-Based Conversational Engagement Clinical Trial) Study is seeking to understand whether addressing isolation and loneliness in older adults by harnessing telehealth technologies can improve cognitive functions and prevent dementia. Having completed our first year of the newly launched intervention project, we have received interesting responses and feedback from participants which have helped us to create meaningful engagement through video conferencing. We will discuss the lessons we have learned on how to create and measure quality engagement in video chats, and our approaches to addressing the social determinants of cognitive decline through interactive conversational techniques aimed at specific brain functions. We will also present our in-house developed video chat application that is specially designed to alleviate technological barriers and make engaging in conversation as easy as tapping a button.

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