Telehealth and the Telephone Epilogue - CCM

In an epilogue to the Telehealth and the Telephone episode (which got a little long on us) we present this quick look a specific program used by FQHCs and other practices, the Medicare Chronic Care Management Program. It’s useful to consider because of its emphasis on establishing a regular check-in with patients, and has been utilized to continue and increase those check-ins during COVID-19. Here, Nicole Keaty, an RN at Little Rivers Health Center, explains how she is using the program.

Chronic care management as a general topic is much, much larger than this one program and is an important area for telehealth tools. It will undoubtedly be a future episode, but this snapshot of one program is useful for thinking about how we use telephone connections in particular towards better health in our communities.

Another quick mention is given to the OneCare Vermont outreach tool for connecting with higher risk patients during COVID-19. We’ll talk with OneCare more in the future about their programs, but wanted to add a quick mention in this episode to remind everyone that we aren’t only going with outreach programs that were in place before the emergency – there are also new outreach tools being built. Here's a blog post from OneCare on the latest updates to their application.

If you want to learn more about payment reform, another thing that gets a nod here, we've got a whole first season on that, check it out at Welcome to Payment Reform.

Thank you to Northern Counties Health Care for supporting this special series on telehealth and COVID-19.