Telemedicine on the PRMS Blog

As part of PRMS’ ongoing commitment to behavioral health, we are pleased to feature Doctors Asha Martin, Alan Rodriguez Penney, Gabrielle Shapiro, and Olga Koblova, members of the New York County Psychiatric Society (NYCPS), as guest bloggers this month, to reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their psychiatric practices over the last year. How did COVID change th ...

In these uncertain times, the issues around telepsychiatry are more confusing than ever. To provide some answers to these uncertainties, we created a Telepsychiatry On-Demand Tutorial and are sharing associated resources, which you can access via this link (access the webinar under “Presentation”). While there continue to be many unknowns, this on-demand tutorial covers changes ...

Here are my top four things to consider before using Skype – or any other technology – for telemedicine: 1) Does the technology comply with HIPAA’s requirements? Under the Privacy Rule, the technology vendor is a Business Associate if it stores (for any amount of time, no matter how short) or has access to protected health information (patient demographic and medical informatio ...

There was an interesting item reported over the past few days regarding the disciplinary action taken by the Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners against the license of a Texas veterinarian, Dr. Ronald Hines. Here is a link to one of many reports on this story. Before I go any further, let me lay out the standard cautions about believing only a little bit of what y ...

I’m sure many of you took note of the Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Anyone working in healthcare has a stake in how the US healthcare system will change as the law is implemented over the next several years. Medical professional liability insurance companies have been studying the law and its implications f ...

Our underwriters and risk managers are often asked, “Do you cover telepsychiatry?”  As with all of life’s important questions, the only correct immediate answer is, “It depends.” Of course, no one should accept this as a final answer, so we proceed to ask several other questions before rendering our final decision.  First, let’s look at the basic definition of the term. When we ...