Health Care Alliance for Patient Safety Telehealth Principles

As the health care system rapidly evolves, HCAPS believes that telehealth can play an integral tool in advancing patient health and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship. With faster and clearer methods to connect, more patients can immediately engage with their doctors and collaborate to improve overall health.

However, to ensure that telehealth advances in a responsible manner, HCAPS has adopted three overarching principles that should help guide discussions related to the use of telehealth.

These principles are:

The doctor-patient relationship should be at the center of telehealth services.	A doctor-patient relationship must be established for a professionally responsible telehealth service to take place.	Clinical care standards for telehealth services should include all aspects of diagnosis and treatment decisions as would be reasonably expected in traditional office-based encounters.

HCAPS will use these principles to guide the organization’s support of new telehealth innovations as the market continues to grow and change.