Self Paced

Telehealth: Challenges, Opportunities and the Future of Care

Telehealth has changed the way that health care is delivered.

About this On Demand Training

Cost: $449

Telehealth: Challenges, Opportunities and the Future of Care Delivery

Telehealth has changed the way that health care is delivered. Telehealth has played a crucial role in bridging gaps during the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting the delivery of care.  In this series, experts from diverse sectors of the health care delivery system explore how health plans, systems and clinicians are using telehealth to respond to COVID-19 and how challenges and opportunities identified during the pandemic might inform the future of quality care delivery in the value-based model. 

  • Health care leaders agree that COVID has catapulted telemedicine years ahead in the course of a few months.
  • Learn how telehealth rapidly and efficiently provides quality, value-based care. 
  • Telehealth will continue to yield new care delivery models in the “new normal.”

Telehealth has changed how health care is delivered and is playing a crucial role in bridging gaps during the pandemic. In this series, experts from diverse sectors of the health care delivery system explore how health plans, systems and clinicians are using telehealth to respond to COVID-19 and how challenges and opportunities identified during the pandemic might inform the future of quality care delivery in the value-based model.

This series includes six courses

Findings and Recommendations from the Telehealth Task Force 

Amid an unprecedented increase in the use of remote medical services, 23 leading health care voices came together to form the Task Force on Telehealth Policy. Convened by the Alliance for Connected Care, the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the American Telemedicine Association, the group represents a broad spectrum of providers, consumer advocates, payers and health care quality experts from public, private and nonprofit sectors. Join NCQA leadership as they share Task Force findings and recommendations. 

Telehealth and Homelessness: Lessons Learned Serving an Overlooked, High-Need Population

COVID-19 pushed the entire health care industry toward increased telehealth. For health care providers serving people experiencing homelessness, there are specific challenges meeting the needs of patients in shelters, on the streets, in encampments and in supportive housing programs. Implementing telehealth services was previously not thought possible for a high-need, medically complex population without housing. Join us for a conversation about the successes, challenges and lessons learned from safety net providers who have shown that telehealth can be a standard part of high-quality care, especially for vulnerable populations. We’ll also discuss policies needed to ensure that successes are made permanent.

Successful Telehealth Implementation During and After COVID

Join our panel of NCQA faculty and clinicians as they share best practices on how to implement and fine-tune your telehealth platform to ensure delivery of patient-centered care—today, and in the future.

Embracing Virtual Care: The Veterans Health Administration’s Rapid Acceleration of Telemental Health During the COVID-19 Response

Dr. Weaver will describe the VHA’s history and promotion of telemental health and how this facilitated a rapid scale-up during the initial COVID-19 response period. She will talk about VHA’s conversion of in-person care to virtual care and the impact of telemental health services for veterans. Hear lessons learned, including organizational strengths and opportunities, moving forward, and implications for other providers and health care systems.

Emerging Strategies for Telehealth, HEDIS and NCQA Products 

The founder, top doctor and chief architect of NCQA products discuss what telehealth, reporting of Electronic Clinical Data Systems data and other innovations mean for HEDIS and NCQA evaluation services such as Health Plan Accreditation. This session performs double duty as the latest installment in NCQA’s most popular webinar series, The Future of HEDIS.

Leveraging Telehealth in Primary Care: How use of Telehealth Meets PCMH Criteria

Telehealth has seen explosive growth over the past few months. For practices that have integrated telehealth into their workflow, this session will highlight how those changes can meet core and elective criteria in PCMH Recognition. We’ll also review telehealth-related updates to the PCMH Recognition standards and guidelines (version 6).

Faculty

Findings and Recommendations from the Telehealth Task Force 

Frank Micciche
Frank Micciche is NCQA’s vice president of Public Policy and External Relations. In this position, he directs NCQA’s relations with Congress, federal agencies and the states, as well as NCQA’s work with employers, associations, corporate sponsors and the media.

Micciche was formerly the Vice President for Partnerships and Coalitions at the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a nonpartisan collaboration of prominent public and private sector leaders and more than 350,000 grassroots supporters working to address the nation’s fiscal imbalance. Prior to this position, he was a Senior Advisor on health reform at McKenna, Long & Aldridge, LLP, and worked for the New America Foundation think tank.
Micciche’s service in the public sector includes his time as a legislative director for the House Minority Leader in Massachusetts and as a federal liaison for Governor John Engler of Michigan. He served for four years as the Director of State-Federal Relations for Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), where he led the Commonwealth’s Washington, DC, office and advised the governor on federal policy issues, with a focus on health care reform.

Micciche holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Tufts University.

Brad Ryan, MD
Dr. Brad Ryan is NCQA’s first ever Chief Product Officer. His addition to NCQA leadership signals the organization’s commitment to build on its existing quality measurement expertise with the promise of new technology, digital measurement and telehealth. He leads NCQA’s pioneering work in digital quality transformation and manages growth and evolution of its existing health care measurement, evaluation and improvement programs.

Dr. Ryan’s prior work includes numerous assists with NCQA’s digital quality initiatives, most recently as co-founder and Chief Solutions & Product Officer at Apervita, a collaborative platform for value-based health care. He also supported NCQA’s Natural Language Processing work with UPMC Enterprises. Dr. Ryan’s professional background is a “perfect storm” of skills and experience for the newly created position. In addition to Apervita, Brad has held leadership roles at IMS Health and McKinsey & Company.

Dr. Ryan earned his medical degree at John’s Hopkins School of Medicine. He studied engineering, computer science and mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Alabama. To this day, he remains firmly committed to “Roll Tide” and to his family and friends in Alabama.

Telehealth and Homelessness: Lessons Learned Serving an Overlooked, High-Need Population

Barbara DiPietro, PhD
Dr. DiPietro has been working in public policy for 20 years, many of them specifically focused on health care and homelessness. She holds a Master’s Degree in Policy Sciences and a Doctorate in Public Policy, both from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her dissertation research focused on the impact of homelessness on emergency departments in Baltimore City, and she continues to work to ensure that health care systems can better serve vulnerable populations. For 10 years, she worked for the State of Maryland in the Governor’s Office as well as the Department of Health, helping coordinate health and human services policy and legislation, interagency children and family services, and the state’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. At this time, she is Senior Director of Policy for two organizations—the National Health Care for the Homeless Council and Health Care for the Homeless of Maryland. In these dual roles, she focuses on national, state and local health policy, with the goals of advancing human rights and ending homelessness. 

Darlene M. Jenkins, DrPH, MPH, CHES 
Dr. Jenkins has been employed at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., since 2009, and currently serves as Senior Director of Programs. She oversees all the Council’s deliverables funded through a National Cooperative Agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration. Her responsibilities include conducting research and facilitating activities to increase access, improve health outcomes and promote health equity for populations experiencing homelessness. Her responsibilities also include serving as faculty for the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Academy which assists primary care health centers to address SDOH affecting vulnerable populations. Prior to working at the Council, Darlene served as the Director of Disparity Elimination for the Tennessee Department of Health focusing on SDOH and reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in the State of Tennessee. 

Jenkins received a BS degree in Clinical Dietetics from Loma Linda University, her MPH from the University of Michigan and DrPH specializing in Community Health Sciences, Maternal and Child Health, and Women’s Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a Registered Dietitian, and Certified Health Education Specialist. Darlene has co-authored and published work in the areas of mental health, alcohol and substance use, health care utilization, and the civil legal needs of individuals experiencing homelessness. She currently serves on several local health and research related committees including the Scientific Research Committee of Vanderbilt University Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

Successful Telehealth Implementation During and After COVID

Greg Adams, MD
Dr. Adams has been a part of the medical community in Boone for over thirty years, as a practicing pediatrician at Blue Ridge Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine since it opened as Boone Pediatric Center in October of 1992. He is currently an adjunct professor for UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine as well as Wake Forest University/ Bowman Gray School of Medicine.
  
Adams believes that Community Care Physician Network (CCPN) has the best program in the nation for Medicaid beneficiaries and is well positioned to enhance medical homes, encourage small practices, and address mental health.   

A North Carolina native, he grew up in Fairborn, Ohio, and graduated from The Ohio State University for his undergraduate studies as well as medical school. From there he moved to Dallas, Texas, where he did his internship and residency at Children’s Medical Center.  
Adams joined the Board of Managers in July 2016.  

Christina Borden, PCMH CCE
Ms. Borden is the Director for Product Development for NCQA’s Recognition Programs. In her eleventh year with NCQA, she oversees the development, implementation, and promotion of NCQA’s Recognition Programs (RP) and oversees new product design, such as the development of NCQA’s telehealth initiatives. She maintains and improves NCQA programs as clinical measures and standards change. Additionally, she works to educate stakeholders, interpret, and maintain guidelines for RP programs and ensure NCQA’s programs properly align with federal guidelines and NCQA’s mission to ensure high quality health care. When appropriate, Borden represents the organization publicly, including in forums for sponsors, state and federal agencies, practices, professional organizations, and other partners. 

Borden’s work in NCQA’s Recognition Programs has been to improve patient outcomes and provider health care delivery through the design and implementation of patient-centric standards. 

Before joining NCQA, she worked at the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) representing non-profit safety net health plans and, previously, as a health liaison on Capitol Hill. 

Embracing Virtual Care: The Veterans Health Administration’s Rapid Acceleration of Telemental Health During the COVID-19 Response

Kendra Weaver, PsyD
Dr. Weaver serves as the Senior Consultant for Clinical Operations in the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (OMHSP), Department of Veterans Affairs Central Office (VACO). In this role, she provides consultation, guidance, and leadership for multiple, systems-focused, national initiatives, including team-based care, behavioral health leadership training, and telemental health. In her 20 years with VA, Dr. Weaver has served in several clinical and administrative leadership positions at the facility, Veterans Integrated Service Network, and VACO levels. 

Weaver received her PsyD from Baylor University. S Her awards include the 2004 Federal Women’s Program Outstanding Woman of the Year Award for Leadership at the James H. Quillen VA and the 2017 American Psychological Association, Division 18, VA Section Award for Outstanding Administrator.

Emerging Strategies for Telehealth, HEDIS and NCQA Products 

Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, MACP 
Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, MACP, is a board-certified internist and executive vice president for the Quality Measurement & Research Group at NCQA. His portfolio at NCQA includes performance measurement development; research; managing NCQA’s contracts and grants portfolio; and contributing to strategic initiatives, public policy and educational programs. Prior to joining NCQA in 2014, Barr was senior vice president, Division of Medical Practice for the American College of Physicians, where he was responsible for promoting patient-centered care through development of programs, services and quality improvement initiatives for internists and other health care professionals.

From 1999–2005, Barr was chief medical officer for Baltimore Medical System, Inc., a Joint Commission accredited Federally-Qualified Health Center. He practiced internal medicine full time in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Vanderbilt University from 1993–1998 and held various administrative positions, including physician director, Medical Management Programs, for the Vanderbilt Medical Group. From 1989–1993, Barr was an active duty physician in the United States Air Force at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia.

Barr has a BS in Forest Biology from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He attended New York University School of Medicine through the U.S. Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program, completed his residency in internal medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago and earned an MBA from the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management.

Barr was a commissioner on the Maryland Health Care Commission (2013–2015), previously served on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee Meaningful Use Workgroup (2010–2012) and is currently on the Board of Trustees of The Horizon Foundation of Howard County.Barr was a commissioner on the Maryland Health Care Commission (2013–2015), previously served on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee Meaningful Use Workgroup (2010–2012) and is currently on the Board of Trustees of The Horizon Foundation of Howard County.

Margaret E. O’Kane 
Margaret E. O’Kane is founder and president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and has received the Picker Institute Individual Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient-Centered Care, as well as the Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership.
Modern Healthcare magazine has named O’Kane one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” 12 times, and one of the “Top 25 Women in Healthcare” 3 times.

She is a board member of the Milbank Memorial Fund and is Chairman of the Board of Healthwise, a nonprofit organization that helps people make better health decisions.
O’Kane holds a Master’s degree in Health Administration and planning from Johns Hopkins University, where she received the Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Brad Ryan, MD
Dr. Brad Ryan is NCQA’s first ever Chief Product Officer. His addition to NCQA leadership signals the organization’s commitment to build on its existing quality measurement expertise with the promise of new technology, digital measurement and telehealth. He leads NCQA’s pioneering work in digital quality transformation and manages growth and evolution of its existing health care measurement, evaluation and improvement programs.

Dr. Ryan’s prior work includes numerous assists with NCQA’s digital quality initiatives, most recently as co-founder and Chief Solutions & Product Officer at Apervita, a collaborative platform for value-based health care. He also supported NCQA’s Natural Language Processing work with UPMC Enterprises. Dr. Ryan’s professional background is a “perfect storm” of skills and experience for the newly created position. In addition to Apervita, Brad has held leadership roles at IMS Health and McKinsey & Company.

Dr. Ryan earned his medical degree at John’s Hopkins School of Medicine. He studied engineering, computer science and mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Alabama. To this day, he remains firmly committed to “Roll Tide” and to his family and friends in Alabama.

Leveraging Telehealth in Primary Care: How use of Telehealth Meets PCMH Criteria

Amy Tennant, PCMH CCE 
Ms.Tennant is a Policy Manager in NCQA’s Recognition Programs Policy and Resources. In this role, she creates and maintains PCMH resources, manages product updates and provides policy support and expertise to customers, PCMH CCEs and NCQA Evaluators. She is also the recognition programs policy lead for work with special populations such as oncology care and care for patients with serious illness.
She started at NCQA in 2016 in the Product Development department, where she supported the development of recognition programs including the redesign of the PCMH standards for 2017, Patient-Centered Specialty Practice and PCMH Distinction in Behavioral Health Integration. Tennant earned her Six Sigma Black Belt and holds a BS in Healthcare Management and Policy from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. 

Continuing Education

This OnDemand course grants 6.0 other Continuing Education Unit (CEU) points for PCMH Certified Content Experts. This is a non AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM, ANA CNE, APA, ACPE and ASWB ACE activity. 

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  1. Self Paced
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