As Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services place increasing emphasis on the role of telehealth in the COVID-19 response, the predominant focus has been on provider-to-patient interactions. This is both necessary and important, but telehealth strategies can also enable critical provider capacity-building efforts that support rapid evolution of clinical protocols for testing and treatment.  Telementoring - virtual collaborative learning and capacity building for providers - typically includes a multidisciplinary team of experts at one end and multiple teams of on-the-ground providers, often in rural and underserved communities, on the other end.

Real-time, regular communications channels between medical experts, public health officials, and front-line community providers ensures that information is flowing - in both directions - to share emerging learning and the most-current protocols for response. Project ECHO, launched in 2003 by the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine, is a virtual telementoring model with more than 240 hubs- typically academic medical centers - operating in 48 states and reaching nearly 70,000 community providers. During this current crisis, it is absolutely critical that states and communities have opportunities to leverage existing national networks, like  Project ECHO, particularly to reach rural and underserved communities around the country. Read more here.

The Pandemic Emergency: Effects On Community-Based Organizations

When it comes to the current crisis, every health and human service organization is in a different position. Hospitals are swamped. Nursing homes and assisted living programs have enacted quarantines and other measures to prevent exposure. But where are community-based specialty provider organizations in this? It's tough out there.

A new survey of the members of the California Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies (CBHA), found that the past few weeks have had a significant impact on consumers, the professionals who serve them, and the community-based provider organizations. I noted four key takeaways in the survey results:

Consumer health status 33% of respondents indicated that they have clients who are too sick to engage in treatment. However, many indicated that they are unsure what the reason for lack of engagement is for many of their clients and if it is COVID-19 related or not. Additionally, one agency indicated that they have lost contact with many of their clients who are experiencing homelessness. Read more here.