Telehealth: The Wild West

The COVID-19 pandemic created an immediate need for telehealth functionality and many providers grabbed the first tool they could find. Many of these applications were never built to support clinical workflows.

Due to the federal government’s Emergency Declaration and subsequent relaxation of HIPAA requirements providers began to use applications that offered essentially no security for protected health information. Some of these products do not even have the capability to document the encounter much less generate a report.