Avera Bolsters Certificate Program With the American Board of Telehealth

Avera Health has launched a national board designed to develop standards for and promote connected health education.

The American Board of Telehealth (ABT) “is a new national entity created to improve and ensure the quality of telehealth by developing high-quality, evidence-based education in the practice,” according to a press release issued this week by the South Dakota-based health network. The group plans to release its first certificate program online on September 7.

The ABT features a founding board consisting of Avera Health executives Deanna Larson, Mandy Bell, Kelly Rhone, Kristi Sidel, Matthew Stanley and Jay Weems.

“Telehealth is an emerging delivery model in health care,” Larson, CEO of the health system’s Avera eCARE telehealth network, said in a press release. “Training professionals on evidence-based practices will ultimately help ensure that patients can trust that the virtual care they are receiving meets high standards.”

The ABT’s advisory board, meanwhile, features some of the biggest names on the national telehealth stage:

• Judd Hollander, MD, senior vice president of healthcare delivery and innovation at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University;
• Andrew Watson, MD, vice president of clinical information technology transformation and medical director of telemedicine at UPMC, as well as a former president of the American Telemedicine Association;
• Karen Rheuban, MD, another former ATA president and director of the Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth at the University of Virginia;
• Brian Skow, MD, MBA, CPE, chief medical officer at South Dakota-based Avera eCARE;
• Sy Saeed, MD, director of the Center for Telepsychiatry & e-Behavioral Health and director of the Nother Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine;
• Nathanial Lacktman, a partner in the national law firm of Foley & Lardner and chair of the firm’s telemedicine and digital health industry team;
• Ann Mond Johnson, CEO of the ATA; and
• Roy Schoenberg, MD, president and CEO of American Well.

“The ABT is promoting a gold standard for professionals and students to learn best practices for implementing and using telemedicine across the care continuum,” Hollander – who will keynote Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s Connected Health Virtual Summit on Sept. 14-18 – said in the press release. “Telemedicine is coming to center stage as an important tool in health care – today and in the future. We need to create training programs to support this goal, and that’s exactly what the American Board of Telehealth is all about.”

The creation of the ABT follows Avera eCARE’s launch last October of a national telehealth certificate program and the Helmsley Telehealth Education Center, named after the 12-year-old charitable foundation that has committed more than $400 billion to telehealth and mHealth programs at Avera and elsewhere.

The program’s first product will be the CORE (Clinical, Operational, Regulatory and Ethics) Concepts in Telehealth Certificate Program, to be launched next month with the publication of validated telehealth competency guidelines through the Harvard Medical Physician Faculty Group. The curriculum will feature seven online modules.

“The first certificate program is available beginning Sept. 7,” the press release notes. “This online, self-paced program provides a comprehensive curriculum enabling the learner to develop knowledge of telehealth concepts for successful implementation and delivery across a broad spectrum of service areas. The content is CME-accredited and is the gold standard of telehealth education in the health sector.”