How to Maintain Up-To-Date Telehealth Regulation Compliance

With telehealth rules and regulations still in flux, mental healthcare providers may find themselves overwhelmed regarding policy compliance in their telehealth practices.

In this video, Edward Kaftarian, MD, executive chairman, Orbit Health Telepsychiatry, offers some practical guidance for how virtual psychiatric providers can ensure they maintain compliance with the latest telehealth regulations while managing a busy practice.

For more expert insights, visit the Telehealth Excellence Forum.

Read the Transcript

Edward Kaftarian, MD:  Hi, my name is Dr Edward Kaftarian. I'm a psychiatrist on the steering Committee for Psych Congress, and I'm also the executive chairman for Orbit Health Telepsychiatry.

Psych Congress Network: Can you share some practical tips for how clinicians can keep up with telehealth regulation compliance amid managing a busy practice?

Dr Kaftarian: For telehealth compliance, you can think of it in simple terms or complex terms because there's plenty of complexity. But thinking about it in the most basic terms, you want to make sure that you're compliant with the law as well as the regulations. What I mean by that is the law is what the legislator has, the Senate and the House of Representatives, that's for federal. Then, of course, the states have their own and legislators, so they enact laws that we need to abide by. Those laws are affected by regulations, the interpretation really of that law or the execution of that law by the executive branch of the government. For the federal government, it'd be the White House, and for the states it would be like the governor and all his people and her people and mayors and whatnot. So, we need to abide by that.

The way that you do it is you have to reference your law, the state law, and the federal law. While that sounds intimidating, you can do that. There are resources, like Find Law and other databases. You can just look right at the law, and I recommend that people, folks, prescribers, clinicians get used to looking at law because it changes and it's so important to how we practice and it has consequences for us. So, I recommend that you look at the periodically and also look at the regulations, like code of regulations, for example, is one way that it's worded in some states, and that's the executive branch's way of executing the law. So you need to be compliant with that too. Also, look at some major court cases when they come about just to help you understand it.

It might seem like a lesson in government and politics, but it's important. The way that you do that, like I said, for laws, it's databases, regulations, you just type in, you can just search for, if you're in whatever state and you put “regulations for telehealth,” you can usually find what you need. You can also look at your boards, medical board for doctors, nursing board for nurses, just whatever your clinical expertise is or licensing is. Then you look at your licensing board and they will have definitions of terms like telehealth and what that includes, and some will indicate standards of care. Some will talk about rules like consent rules, whether you need a documented consent and whether you need the patient to actually sign a consent form. So, the medical boards typically will have some discussion on that, and some do, some don't. But my recommendation is to always check those databases.

Lastly, if you're having trouble, there are organizations called “telehealth resource centers,” and every part of the country has a regional telehealth center. You go to telehealth resource centers and you see which one pertains to where your patient is, because that's typically what the rules that you need to follow is where the patient is actually physically located. You can also check the Center for a Connected Health policy, which is a really good source of information. You can even email them and ask them a specific policy question and they'll answer it. The quality may vary, but generally they're helpful.

So, there are plenty of resources that you can check. Also, come to the Psych Congress lectures because we are always on top of this stuff, and we give really comprehensive talks on telehealth regulations.

Edward Kaftarian, MD, is a preeminent authority in the field of Telepsychiatry. He holds a distinguished seat on the Telepsychiatry Committee of the American Psychiatric Association and is a member of the Steering Committee for PsychCongress, the United States' largest independent mental health educational conference. Additionally, Dr. Kaftarian is a prominent speaker on the rules and regulations governing telehealth. Dr. Kaftarian completed his psychiatry training at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University and holds board certifications in Psychiatry, Forensic Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine.