ACP calls for appropriate and meaningful measures to evaluate telemedicine

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0140

URL goes live when the embargo lifts

As the amount of health care services provided to patients using telemedicine increases, physicians must ensure the quality of the performance measures being used to evaluate that care, says the American College of Physicians (ACP) in a new policy paper. The paper details new recommendations to ensure that as measures are developed to gauge telemedicine services they are evidence-based, methodologically sound and clinically meaningful. The paper is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

ACP’s paper focuses on telemedicine services provided in an ambulatory care environment, including via interactive audio and video telecommunications systems. ACP recommends that any performance measure used to evaluate telemedicine visits should adhere to the same criteria as in-person visits, and that existing measures for in-person visits should be evaluated to see whether it would be appropriate to also include telemedicine visits. ACP also cautions that telemedicine visits need to be incorporated into electronic health records systems, so that those visits do not become standalone encounters further fragmenting care delivery. The paper strongly recommends that measures must be tested to show that they are reliable and valid for the telemedicine environment, as well as attributed at the appropriate level, whether that’s to an individual physician, group practice, health system or health plan. Lastly, ACP recommends that measures should be used to evaluate the impact of telemedicine on under-resourced communities to ensure that access and quality of care are not harmed in communities that lack digital access.

Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at [email protected]. To speak with ACP president, Ryan Mire, MD, MPH, please contact Jaquelyn Blaser at [email protected].