Clinical Videoconferencing in Telehealth: Program Development and Practice (Behavioral Telehealth)

Research findings and dissemination are making healthcare more effective. Electronic health records systems and advanced tools are making care delivery more efficient. Legislative reforms are striving to make care more affordable. Efforts still need to be focused on making healthcare more accessible.

Clinical Videoconferencing in Telehealth takes a comprehensive and vital step forward in providing mental health and primary care services for those who cannot make traditional office visits, live in remote areas, have transportation or mobility issues or have competing demands. Practical, evidence-based information is presented in a step by step format at two levels: for administrators, including information regarding selecting the right videoconferencing technology, navigating regulatory issues, policy temples, boilerplate language for entering into care agreements with other entities and practical solutions to multisite programming; and for clinicians, including protocols for safe, therapeutically sound practice, informed consent and tips for overcoming common technical barriers to communication in clinical videoconferencing contexts. Checklists, tables, templates, links, vignettes and other tools help to equip professional readers for providing safe services that are streamlined and relevant while avoiding guesswork, false starts and waste. The book takes a friendly-mentor approach to communication in areas such as: 

Logistics for administrators:

• Clinical videoconferencing infrastructures and technologies
• Policy development, procedures and tools for responsible and compliant programming
• Navigating issues related to providing services in multiple locations  

Protocols for clinicians:

• The informed consent process in clinical videoconferencing
• Clinical assessment and safety planning for remote services
• Minimizing communication disruption and optimizing the therapeutic alliance

Clinical Videoconferencing in Telehealth aptly demonstrates the promise and potential of this technology for clinicians, clinic managers, administrators and others affiliated with mental health clinical practices. It is designed to be the comprehensive “one-stop” tool for clinical videoconferencing service development for programs and individual clinicians.

Peter W. Tuerk, Ph.D. earned his degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2007. He currently serves as Section Chief of the PTSD Clinical and Telehealth programs at the Ralph. H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, SC. Dr. Tuerk is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science within the Military Sciences Division at the Medical University of South Carolina where he serves as Director of Research Training for the APA approved psychology internship program. He conducts research focused on the integration of technology into normative mental health care settings and the enhancement of evidence-based treatments for PTSD and provides related clinical workshop trainings to VA and DoD providers. Dr. Tuerk has led and participated in a number of data-based local, national and international initiatives to develop and test the delivery of telehealth-oriented mental health services and Chaired the VA National Strategy Taskforce to Promote Evidence Based Treatments via Telehealth. He is the recipient of VA’s highest honor, the Olin E. Teague Award for career achievement “extraordinarily beneficial to the rehabilitation of war-injured veterans.” As a scientist-practitioner, he helped to test and disseminate the now common practice of conducting exposure therapy via clinical videoconferencing. Currently, as a front-line healthcare manager, his local clinical team provides care for and coordinates the logistics of roughly 1,000 home-based clinical videoconferencing encounters, annually and 4,000 annual office-based clinical videoconferencing encounters to 12 VA facilities and Community Based Outreach Clinics in 3 states, using hardware-based, software-based and mobile application-based technologies to promote access to care.

Peter Shore, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Shore is currently the VA Northwest Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN 20) Director of Telehealth in the Department of Veterans Affairs. From 2011-2013, Dr. Shore was Program Manager, Web Services, Mental Health Services in VA’s Central Office. In 2012, Dr. Shore was awarded a VHA Innovation Award to expand the Home-Based Telemental Health pilot, which he implemented at the Portland VA in December 2009. In July 2013, Dr. Shore was the recipient of the James Besyner Early Career Award by the Association of VA Psychologist Leaders (AVAPL). As a nationally recognized subject matter expert in non-clinic based telehealth, Dr. Shore has been an invited speaker at national conferences and routinely consults on a variety of topics related to telehealth.