MedChi urges telehealth technology amid COVID-19 pandemic

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MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, is urging the state to provide physician practices with telehealth technology to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Noting the important role of social distancing to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, Congress, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and private insurance companies are supporting the expanded use of telehealth for patient care. Telehealth can allow a patient with coronavirus to receive treatment without risking healthcare worker exposure, and other patients in the office from contamination.

As a result of the outbreak, the MedChi Care Transformation Organization (MedChi CTO) provided its physician practices with telehealth capability, through DrFirst’s Backline care collaboration tool. Backline allows physicians to conduct telehealth sessions, without requiring patients to download an app or complete a cumbersome registration process. Backline is a full care collaboration platform that allows physician practices to share information with other clinicians and patients through secure channels that comply with HIPAA requirements to protect patients’ health information.

MedChi and DrFirst currently collaborate in additional ways to help physician practices as they care for their patients. DrFirst’s iPrescribe is the first mobile e-prescribing app to allow Maryland clinicians to access the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) data to help control the opioid crisis, through a partnership with MedChi and CRISP, the state’s Health Information Exchange that operates the PDMP. In addition, Maryland recently awarded DrFirst a grant to equip paramedics in two counties with Backline EMS so they can have real-time access to patients’ medication histories and a secure way to text hospitals with patient information.