American Heart Association Unveils Telehealth Resource Center

The American Heart Association has established the Center for Telehealth to encourage telehealth adoption and use within the cardiovascular care arena, thereby mitigating healthcare disparities.

Funded by a $15.9 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the center primarily aims to advance the integration of telehealth into healthcare delivery. It will develop telehealth education resources to improve the knowledge and skills of healthcare professionals offering telehealth services and establish best practices and quality standards to guide telehealth use in chronic disease management.

Further, the center will offer the American Heart Association’s telehealth certification for healthcare professionals, create solutions to extend telehealth access, and help build an evidence base for telehealth integration.

“Over the past three years, a huge proportion of care has shifted to the virtual landscape as clinicians and patients search for a safe, reliable way to receive needed care,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, in a press release. “Telehealth as a method of care delivery can potentially transform the health care system, reducing costs and increasing quality, patient focus and patient satisfaction. We are so grateful for Helmsley’s generosity and commitment. Improving access to high quality care will save more lives and continue to meet people where they are.”

Telehealth use skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 76.6 million visits in the second quarter of 2020, according to a report by Trilliant Health. Though usage has dropped by 45.8 percent to 41.5 million visits in the fourth quarter of 2022, it remains higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Telehealth use within the cardiovascular care arena also experienced a boost, with a study published in 2021 showing that more people used telehealth for cardiovascular care during the pandemic than before. Researchers used EHR data for the study, assessing around 75,000 in-person visits, 4,700 telehealth visits, and 10,300 telephone visits from April to December 2020 and comparing them to more than 87,000 in-person visits conducted during the same period in 2019.

They also found that cardiovascular patients using telehealth were more likely to be from racial or ethnic minorities and have cardiovascular conditions like hypertension, coronary artery disease, atrial defibrillation, or heart failure.

The American Heart Association released a scientific statement last November that detailed the impact of telehealth use on the treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The association noted the benefits of using telehealth to treat CVD, including the potential to reduce healthcare expenditures, improve access among those residing in rural areas, and increase the overall quality of care and patient satisfaction.

Research has pointed to some of these benefits. For instance, clinical evidence shows that follow-up visits via telemedicine were as effective at reducing 30-day readmission rates among heart failure patients as in-person follow-ups.

The study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association in March 2022 included 6,918 patients, of whom 46.3 percent attended a follow-up appointment during the pandemic. Of this population, about 7.6 percent participated in their appointment through telehealth.

Researchers found that 23 percent of patients without follow-up visits were readmitted within 30 days of discharge. However, only 14 percent of those who received an in-person follow-up and 15 percent who attended their follow-up appointment through telehealth were readmitted in the same time frame.

Thus, patients who participated in early follow-ups, regardless of the setting, were at a lower risk for readmission, researchers stated.

However, the American Heart Association scientific statement also highlighted barriers to integrating telehealth into cardiovascular care delivery, such as reimbursement issues, the need for a secure IT infrastructure when managing data gathered from technology, and the lack of access to technology among patients.