Today’s message focuses on the importance of telehealth as it relates to monitoring medicine assisted training (MAT) and its ties to substance use disorders (SUD). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 10.1 million people struggle with opioid related SUDs, a statistic serving as a major driver of U.S. attention toward the opioid pandemic. To the benefit of patients nationwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a sharp increase in utilizing telehealth services that has improved the ability to treat patients with SUDs. Unfortunately, as we see the decline in the public health emergency posed by the pandemic, clinicians are growing more fearful of a steep decline in telehealth usage.

Despite the decline of the pandemic, it is important to prepare and develop company frameworks that will promote continued usage of telehealth. Some of the most prominent benefits of telehealth include: convenience, increased provider capacity, and patient ability to receive care from home. At the forefront of these benefits, patient accessibility is among the strongest advantages of telehealth as patients are able access care through personal devices that can be used in the privacy of their own home.

Many clinicians are now beginning to advocate for legislation to be administered in order to require certain levels of usage related to telehealth in order to ensure this maintenance of convenience. In the wake of such events, companies are urged to move swiftly in trying to prepare infrastructure to support prominent telehealth usage, but to be meticulous as telehealth is one of the most closely regulated aspects of healthcare. Establishing clinical strategies, methods of compliance, and oversight frameworks are such details to receive extensive focus when applying telehealth more intensely into your practice. In conclusion, clinicians have their work cut out for them as advocacy for telehealth may be on the rise, so consider benefits to patients, especially for providing them with crucial care that can help aid in issues such as the opioid pandemic. 

References:

​​https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/telemedicine-laws-for-opioids-and-1220150/