Virtual Care

Patients with low acuity health issues can be seen virtually by a board-certified Emergency Medicine or Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician while in the Emergency Department.

Providers virtual urgent care services to patients from their home. Patients use a smart phone or a computer to connect with a board-certified Emergency Medicine or Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician seven days a week from 8am-12am.

A remote telemedicine provider observes the triage process and starts orders for needed tests right from the very beginning of a patient’s visit.

This program cares for patients after their hospitalization by bringing the Emergency Department to their home. The program focuses on certain diseases, including heart failure, COPD, kidney failure, and diabetes.

Essential training in virtual care includes understanding the importance of the “soft” skill set required to conduct telemedicine visits with a camera, as well as ensuring that providers at all levels are aware of technical and medicolegal standards. To respond to this need, the Weill Cornell Emergency Medicine Center for Virtual Care (CVC) was launched, to improve the delivery of virtual care services across the health system. CVC educators provide basic telemedicine training including: “web-side” manner, remote patient examination skills, modality-specific decision-making and other essentials to conduct successful virtual care. Appreciation of these essential telemedicine elements yields benefits for both providers and institutions by increasing care proficiency as well as awareness of potential risk.

Essential Elements of Telemedicine

• Basics of Telemedicine
• "Web-Side" Manner
• Remote Patient Examination Skills
• Modality-Specific Decision Making

Virtual care advancements, implemented with rigorous study and evaluation, increase access, improve outcomes, reduce costs and improve clinician and patient experiences. These changes are altering the business and consumer environment of medicine and this new landscape requires new health care provider competencies. CVC training correlates with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core competencies and telemedicine training is also recommended by the American Medical Association (AMA) for all medical students; to meet this recommendation, virtual care training is required for all Weill Cornell Medicine students.

The CVC provides a unified location in midtown Manhattan for undergraduate and graduate medical education and telemedicine workforce training for providers from across the health care continuum. Our instructors promote unified standards of care, with training led by virtual care experts drawn from specialties with active telemedicine services including emergency medicine, neurology, pediatrics, primary care and psychiatry.

CVC educators offer in-person and remote training sessions for health care institutions throughout the United States. Training elements, including program duration and curriculum specifics, can be customized for individual groups to best meet participants needs. Training is recommended for health care providers at all levels, including care managers, medical students, graduate staff members, advanced practice providers and attending physicians. Virtual medicine competency training ensures that clinicians are comfortable providing care in virtual space, following best telemedicine practices and operating in alignment with legal and regulatory guidelines, as this new method of health care continues to evolve rapidly and transform the industry as a whole.

CVC Telemedicine Training Modules

CVC telemedicine training is offered through various modules, including a “flipped” classroom, experiential learning and a remote refresher.

1) Flipped Classroom (Remote)

• One-Hour Online Module - Hardware Requirements, Legal/Regulatory, Framing/Staging, Safety Protocols
• Fifteen-Minute Standard Patient Encounter

2) Experiential Learning (In-Person)

• Interactive Session with Simulation

• Standardized Patient Encounters and Debriefing Sessions
• Advanced Communications Skills, Modality-Specific Decision-Making, On-Camera Professionalism

3) Refresher (Remote)

• Virtual Refresher Session Tailored to Learner Needs

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Contact

To learn more, register for training or support our efforts, contact:

Denzil Coleman, MHIT
Administrative Director
dec4010@med.cornell.edu