Security And Video Quality Essential For Building Trust During Telehealth Encounters

By Gary Sibley, Brother OmniJoin

Establishing intimacy and building trust between provider and patient is important for effective healthcare delivery, but it can also be a challenge. Telehealth encounters, due to the physical distance and sensory limitations of electronic communication, can make that connection even more difficult.

Advances in telehealth technology, however, have made forging deep relationships with patients more feasible, even if the patient is thousands of miles away. Through video web conferencing technology that enables high-definition video and high-fidelity audio, providers and patients can feel closer and more connected.

Crucial to building trust during telehealth encounters are security features built into the technology to protect patient privacy. Secure Telehealth, a Pittsburgh-based company that provides secure online services to the behavioral health community, understands the importance of technology not interfering with effective care delivery. The firm switched the video web conferencing technology it embeds in its software to a new vendor that offered better ease-of-use, but sacrificed none of the security. The result has been a more seamless experience for both provider and patient and one that encourages patient engagement and improved outcomes.

Secure Telehealth Fulfilling Healthcare Provider Shortage

The United States is facing a healthcare provider shortage, especially among behavioral health professionals. As of 2014, there were approximately 4,000 Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) for mental health in the country, leaving those areas with less than one mental health professional for every 30,000 residents.

Telehealth can help address this shortage by connecting behavioral health professionals to underserved populations, or to patients who may feel a stigma about visiting such a provider in person. Secure Telehealth recognized this need in the market and developed a software platform that helps providers deliver behavioral telehealth services to patients in rural areas and other HPSAs.

Early on, Secure Telehealth faced challenges with its former video web conferencing technology vendor. For example, connecting with patients was time-consuming due to the vendor’s software, which required lengthy downloads for each session. The bulky software interfered with the user-interface performance for both providers and patients. This led to diminished video and audio quality and distracted from the provider-patient interaction during therapy sessions.

Secure Telehealth eventually switched video web conferencing technology vendors to a more streamlined system that required no extensive configuration or downloads for the providers. With one click, providers could begin a session and not be distracted by technical delays. Further, the new vendor’s video web conferencing technology was not bare bones, but rather offered high-definition video and audio and an advanced security infrastructure.

Security To Protect Patient Privacy, Enable Trust

These security features included end-to-end encryption using the industry-standard SSL/TLS protocol and with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, which is the same level used across the country to protect healthcare, financial and government information. The HIPAA Security Rule also requires healthcare organizations to encrypt any protected health information (PHI) that is electronically exchanged.

As an additional protection, the new vendor offered proxy and firewall traversal functionality that simplified connecting with patients by routing all sessions through a single, secure port. This means providers do not need additional configurations to connect with patients regardless of their networking environment. Other key security features included configurable password controls and a private cloud option.

Cloud computing is growing in popularity across healthcare, but there are important distinctions between public and private clouds. A private cloud is installed behind the provider’s firewall, delivering maximum protection from hackers while offering control for the provider or healthcare organization. Secure Telehealth’s video web conferencing technology also allows providers to “lock” the meeting. So even if an additional person would be able to access and enter the required password, that person would not be allowed entry to the session without the provider being notified and granting permission.

Today, the new web conferencing technology helps behavioral health providers using Secure Telehealth to conduct 2,000 encounters per day with patients around the country.

Ensuring Quality Care Regardless Of Distance

Behavioral healthcare is a natural fit for telehealth technology since much of clinical counseling revolves around the ability to facilitate personal interactions — listening, observing body language, patient affect, and minute changes to facial expression. From the patient’s perspective, engaging with their therapist in the privacy of their own home can help them overcome the “mental-health stigma” obstacle, encouraging more open and honest communication with the clinician.

The convenience factor also makes it easier to keep appointments, which benefits both provider and patient. Beyond behavioral health, however, telehealth technology presents opportunities to improve chronic disease management, care team meetings or any type of healthcare encounter where the provider touching the patient is not essential. That is why, in conjunction with care delivered in person, telehealth can help organizations reduce unnecessary spending, reach more patients in less time and increase efficiency.

About The Author

Gary Sibley is vice president of sales and marketing at Brother OmniJoin.